The stock market crash - and after

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1815583320

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-204544

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Fisher, Irving http://d-nb.info/gnd/118533541

Title:: The stock market crash - and after

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1930

Scope:: XXVI, 286 S.; graph. Darst

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter VIII. Scientific Research and Invention

Collection:: Economics Books

Scientific Research and Invention 137 industry, subject to the tyranny of the law of “decreasing returns.” At a given stage of the sci- ence and art of agriculture, additional bushels of wheat or of any other crop could be wrested from the soil only with a disproportionately increased expenditure of labor and capital. If there were no changes in the methods of agriculture, foodstuffs and other raw materials and products of the farm must continuously advance in price as population increases and the demand for farm products grows. But this, which was the logic of Ricardo, Malthus and their followers, implies that practices and appli- ances remain unchanged. Under such assumptions the theory is correct. But economists cannot reckon without taking account of the scientific researchers and inventors who have revolutionized agriculture half a dozen times since the eighteenth century, until today scientific farming has been transformed almost into a manufacturing industry. Subsoil plowing, better fertilizers, better breeds of farm animals, new and improved crops, utiliza- tion of waste products, and, last and most important, improved means of transportation have increased manifold the area and productivity of economic land since Ricardo laid down his famous law of rent, based upon the “permanent and indestructible qual- ities of the soil.” Agricultural chemists long ago taught the farmer the value of soil analysis for showing what lands are suited to particular crops, what kinds of ferti- lizer to use. These chemists have found hundreds

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