THE PROBLEM OF RENT 103

been held by parents and grandparents may serve to induce
2 submission to the exaction of a rent which leaves an
inadequate remuneration to the farmer for his labour.
Similarly, a landlord may be unwilling to press an old
tenant, even though the land has risen in value, Further,
capital invested in the soil cannot be withdrawn at short
notice. Some improvements may take years to exhaust,
and a tenant, who was unable to secure adequate compensation
 for unexhausted improvements, effected at his
cost, might lose less by renewing his lease, at a rent higher
than the land, without those improvements, could bear, than
by abandoning the value represented by improvements.
Where such hindrances to unfettered competition are
absent, the competition of farmers for tenancies, and the
desire of landlords not to have land unlet, tend to adjust
contract-rents to the level determined by the surplus of
the returns over the expenses of cultivation of the soil.
The amounts of the rents of different soils tend to be
adjusted to the differences in the facilities which they
afford for cultivation. Where the nature of the soil demands
cultivation by men of greater ability, these are in a position
of advantage for securing the tenancy, since those of less
ability will fail to secure a yield large enough to enable
them to make offers for the land as good as those which
the more capable can make without sacrifice of profit. It
is necessary to state this, since the tendency in comparing
different farms theoretically is to consider them as cultivated
with equal skill. In practice, higher skill is required for
some classes of farming work, and an adjustment takes
place between the skill of the farmer and the opportunities
afforded for the exercise of skill on different farms.
The amount of rent has been stated above in terms of
returns to and expenses of cultivation. We now proceed to
present the same fact from a different point of view. If the
needs of a country for agricultural produce (say wheat, for
precision) could all be supplied from the most fertile soil it
contained, no soil inferior to the best being cultivated, and
the yield being, say, 25 bushels an acre, rent would not
appear, and the price of produce would correspond to the