SECTION CXCVIII.. Remedy in Case One Factor of Production Has Become Dearer.

REMEDY IN CASE ONE FACTOR OF PRODUCTION HAS BECOME DEARER.

When one of the three branches of income has grown as compared with the others; in other words, when the factor of production which it represents has become relatively dearer, it is to the interest of the undertaker and of the public, that it should be replaced where possible by another and cheaper productive force. (§ 47.) On this depends the advantageousness of intensive agriculture (high farming) in every higher stage of civilization. There land is dear and labor cheap. Hence, efforts are made to get along with the least amount of land-surface, and this minimum of land is made more productive by a number of expedients in cultivation, by manuring it, by seed-corn, etc., of course also by the employment of journeymen laborers, oxen, etc. And since the price of land is intimately connected with the price of most raw material, remains are here saved as much as possible, often with a great deal of trouble.[198-1] In a lower stage of civilization, such savings would be considered extravagance. As land is here cheap, and capital dear, it is necessary to carry on the cultivation of land extensively; that is, save in capital and labor, and allow the factor nature to perform the most possible. The clearing up of untilled land, or the draining of swampy land etc., would be frequently injurious here; for it would require the use of a very large amount of capital to obtain land of comparatively little value.

In large cities, it is customary to build houses high in proportion to the dearness of the land.[198-2] Thus, in England, where the rate of interest is low and wages high, labor is readily supplanted by capital. In countries like the East Indies or China, the reverse is the case. I need only call attention to the palanquins used in Asia instead of carriages; to the men who in South America carried ore down eighteen hundred steps to the smelting furnaces,[198-3] and, on the other hand, to the "elevators," so much in favor in England, which are used in factories to carry people from one story to another inside to save them the trouble of going up stairs.[198-4]