THE PROBLEM OF RENT 113

mainly on local supplies. Agricultural produce has been
cheapened by this supply from districts where the cost of
production is small, and from which the cost of transportation
has been reduced to a very low figure. The lower value of
produce has lowered rents as measured in produce, since it
has made it unprofitable to cultivate lands of low fertility, or
press intensive cultivation to a stage of low returns, and thus
the amount of rent, measured in produce, has been reduced
concurrently with the fall in value of the produce, and as a
result of that fall. Justas the increasing demand for produce
involves resorting to poorer soils and more intensive cultivation,
 and thus leads to higher rents, the reduced demand on
the old lands has had an opposite effect in England, and in
countries similarly placed. Changes in methods of cultivation
have been rendered possible by advance in agricultural
knowledge, but have failed to offset generally the influences
here under consideration. Thus, agricultural rents in
England have fallen during the last thirty years, while the
supply of agricultural produce available for consumption
by the English people has greatly increased. The growing
populations of many large cities have rendered more
intensive cultivation of land in their neighbourhood, for the
raising of market-garden produce, much more profitable than
formerly, but the areas which can be affected by these
possibilities are, by the nature of the case, somewhat limited.
In reference to the new lands, the products from which
have competed so keenly with home-grown produce in
England, it is necessary to make a few observations. The
doctrine of rent, which has been discussed in this chapter,
is a doctrine framed to explain conditions which contrast
widely with those presented by these newly opened districts.
[n them we find abundance of land, available at so low a
price as to be fairly classed as “no-rent” land, that is, the
annual interest on the purchase price is so small a sum per
acre as to be practically negligible in comparison with rents
which are common, and regarded as moderate, in England.
Much of this land, too, is cultivated by methods, and with
appliances, which fail to develop the utmost possibilities of
the soil. Frequently the increase of outlay on them would