[04 ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES

cost of raising it on this best soil. Imagine the community
to increase, so that its needs could no longer be met from the
best land, under the old conditions of cultivation. An
inferior quality of soil might then come into use, yielding
but 22 bushels to the acre. Under these conditions, the
value of the produce must be adequate to make its production
 on the inferior soil profitable, that is, it must rise
till 22 bushels suffice to pay the expenses of cultivating an
acre. The best soil will now yield 3 bushels per acre beyond
expenses, and the cultivator will be no worse off, when
paying 3 bushels per acre rent for the best soil, than when
paying no rent for the second-rate soil. If the need for
produce increase further, so that a third quality of land,
yielding but 20 bushels, must be brought into contribution,
the value of the produce must rise so that 20 bushels may
cover the expenses of cultivating an acre. The best land
can now yield a rent of 5 bushels per acre, the second
quality one of 2 bushels. With more numerous gradations
of quality the general principle remains unaltered, and an
approximation is made to real conditions, where different
qualities of soils are found grading gradually from best to
worst. Advantages of situation are equivalent to additional
fertility, as reducing the expenses of marketing, if not also of
obtaining the appliances for raising, the produce.
In the above illustration, the need of recourse to
inferior soils may be avoided by having recourse to more
intensive cultivation of the superior land. Thus, if doubling
the labour and capital on the best soil would yield a total of
48 bushels per acre, the yield to the second half of the labour
and capital would be 23 bushels, while it could only secure
22 bushels on second-grade land. Under such conditions,
and so long as such intensive cultivation yielded a supply
adequate to the needs of the community, the price need not
rise above what would make 23 bushels sufficient to pay for
an amount of capital and labour equal to that originally
conceived as expended on each acre. That original
cultivating effort yielded 25 bushels, and may now be
remunerated with the value of 23 bushels. Thus an excess
of 2 bushels appears, in similar fashion to what previously