part to them the highest rate of production of which they admit. The economic force which provides most room for all, by obliging each to economize and curtail in the use of room, so as to occupy no more space than he can use to the best advantage, is rent. In agriculture, the chief need of society is that the land shall be used for the production of those crops of which there is most economic need, as shown by the degree of effective demand. Near to great centers of population, flowers, bulky vegetables, roots, fruits, and grass for hay, are most needed. At the least, the last-named item will continue to be among proxi-mural crops, as long as horses do most of the intra-mural transportation of large cities. Agricultural rents, therefore, reserve the land near the great cities for the bulky crops, in which a little ground worked over with great labor produces a more valuable, but less transportable return than is obtained from the great farms at a distance from the social centers. On the other hand, as we go out through Ohio, Illinois, and Iowa, and still more, as we reach Dakota and Wyoming, with every fall in the values of land, there is an increase in the degree in which extensive crop-raising takes the place of intensive, or in which that form of agriculture is followed, which derives products of smallest bulk from the largest area of land. Finally, in Buenos Ayres and Patagonia land is sold, not by the acre, but by the number of heads of cattle it contains, and these are estimated, not for their meat, but only for their hides and tallow. Nor is there any variation in the economic law, which thus economizes space at the extremities, and that which does the same at the center. Everywhere it is expressed by saying that rent distributes working space according to the number and value of the uses that compete for its possession. In the heart of a great city, a family occupies two rooms at a cost for rent of $8 per week, when four miles out toward the suburbs they could hire a cottage of six rooms for $4 per week, and by going out twelve or twenty miles they could hire an acre of land, a cottage of ten rooms, and fruit garden for perhaps $3 per week. If asked why they do not go where they can get more room for less rent, they answer, "What is economy to one family, may be waste, or loss, to another. Those of us who think we can incur the loss of time, and increase of transportation involved, and support ourselves in the short hours left in the day do so. But many of us could not keep our places, and lose the time and pay the fares, involved in so much daily travel to and fro,” COMPETING USES. 249 Reverting now, from the social centers to the periphery, we find the same economic law. In Alaska, at Icy Cape, the sea-lion competes with the bear only, for the possession of land. This is anterior to the existence, in land, of any economic value. But when the fur and seal companies begin to compete with each other, it first attains a value, because two possible uses compete with each other, viz., taking bear and taking seals. But as it can not be cultivated, its value is small. Coming down to Saskatchawan, in Canada, wheat, buckwheat, and potatoes can be cultivated, and with five possible uses its value rises. In Minnesota ten grains, five grasses, and six root crops can all be cultivated, and successfully carried to consumers, without the cost of carriage consuming the entire price. Besides, cattle, sheep and hogs can now be grown upon it. Twenty-four uses compete for the land, and its value rises to from $20 to $50 per acre. Near St. Paul and Minneapolis small gardening, dairying, poultry raising, bee culture, fruit can be marketed, and thirty possible uses compete, and the value rises to $250 per acre. Then it is sought, if within two miles of the town, for residence and garden spaces but not for trade. Drawing nearer, it is sought for retail but not for wholesale-or for manufacturing, but not yet for exchanging or banking. With these competitions it rises to $100 a front foot, unimproved. So, as the competitions increase in their number and value, the value of the land rises, until, in the heart of the large cities, as high a price will be paid, for a few cubic feet of space, as would be paid in remote districts for a mile square. 99. Rent as a Balance to Transportation.-In no other way can the situations or locations in which most business is possible, be secured for those who have the requisite means, skill, prudence, and ability to do it. Even competing workers, in different countries, find their rents adjusted by the same economic law. In Iowa, farm-land rents for $3 an acre, in England for $25 an acre. The acre in Iowa will produce only twenty bushels of wheat, because its distance from market makes a hasty and cheap tillage, without fertilizers and with little labor, yield the largest return from a given capital. The acre in England, being nearer the market, can be profitably brought up to a higher state of tillage, averaging thirty bushels per acre. The wheat in Iowa is worth only seventy cents, because costs of transportation and handling, amounting to sixty cents, are necessary to get it to its consumer in Pennsylvania, New England, or Manchester, Eng land, where it is worth $1.30. Hence the Iowa farmer gets from his acre twenty bushels at seventy cents, or $14, out of which he pays $3 rent, leaving him $11. The English farmer gets $1.30 for thirty bushels, amounting to $39, out of which, if he pays $25 rent, he has $14. Supposing the English farmer to pay $3 per acre for fertilizers, which the Iowa farmer does not use, the final returns to both would present that perfect equalization of returns from capital and labor, toward which all investments and employments are constantly tending, but which they never exactly reach. On the other hand, suppose cost of transportation for the Iowa farmer to be diminished by thirty cents per bushel, he makes an advance in profits of $7 per acre, an event which the English tenant could only meet, either by getting a reduction in his rent, or labor, or an improvement in his crop. The transportation tax of the Iowa farmer, by an economic law of unstable equilibrium, is thus held in a state of equality with the rent tax of the English tenant, allowance being made for the higher average rates of profit required on capital in Iowa than is necessary in England. Suppose the English farmer to pay $3 per acre for fertilizers, and that the Iowa farmer would manure his lands as highly, and raise their productive power to the same standard as that of the English farmer, if he got as good a price for his wheat, it would then follow that the tax of transportation which the Iowa farmer now pays is as follows: Diminished product of 10 bu. per acre at $1.30 per bu. $13.00 Diminished price of freight on 20 bu. 60c. 12.00 Total, $25.00; while the English farmer's tax on the production of the same value in corn is Rent £5 per acre, $25.00; or the equivalent of the Iowa farmer's tax for transportation. Of course it is the fact that capital and labor, invested in wheat. growing in the Western States, do reap a larger profit-and-wage fund, than in the Eastern States and in England, that causes the line of cultivation to push further westward each year. But that this tends toward equalization, between English capital invested in wheat-raising, and American, is shown by the “Report of Read and Pell on American Agriculture," in which they assume that the Western wheat-grower gets his land gratis. They say: WHAT RENT SAVES. 251 Cost of growing a quarter of wheat (480 lbs.) in the West including Freight to Chicago.. Thence to New York.. New York to Liverpool Handling in America (which may be avoided on through rates). £ s. d. 18 0 5 2 4 92 1 1 2 1 1 17 9/2 The estimate may possibly, ere long, be affected by a reduction in the freights from the farms to Chicago to the extent of one-half. Allowing a deduction on this head of 38. 9d., or about 6d. a bushel, the estimate would be brought down to 448., or, without Liverpool charges, to 428. the quarter. This report shows a clear cost, of $10.50 per quarter of eight bushels, to the American wheat-raiser, against which the English grower has to offset his rent of land and wages. If the English grower raises thirty-two bushels per acre, the local protection which he derives, on his thirty-two bushels, from the transportation tax on his American competitor, amounts to $42 per acre, less the wages he pays per acre for cultivation. If he pays £5 per acre rent, and $17 per acre wages, he is even with his American rival in his chances of profit. The first merchants, in all countries, are peddlers. In this early period the value in the peddler's pack exceeds, perhaps, that in the land over which he travels.* The peddler pays no rent, but takes all goods to his customers. When he opens his store, so that his customers may come to him, ` his rent rises pretty nearly in proportion to the amount of transportation he avoids, relatively to the number of sales made. The degree, in which it falls short of so rising, measures the profit he makes by the change from traveling to paying rent. The first manufacturers and artisans were traveling shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths, tinners, spinners, and weavers, who went from house to house doing work for, or carrying it to their patrons. When they open a shop or factory, they save a large cost of transportation on their goods, machinery, and persons, and, as there are many competitors, all trying to make the same saving, the competition between them, for the possession of land, enables the landlord to charge them as rent a sum about equal to the average profits on capital when invested in land, and the remainder of his saving by transportation accrues to the manufacturer as his profit of substituting rent for transportation. * In 1624, the site of the present city of New York and its suburbs was sold for $5. ("Condition of Nations," by Kolb, tr. by Streater, p. 803.) In 1815, Chicago was sold for £6 108. About 1810, Cincinnati was sold for a horse. ("English Land and English Landlords," p. 283.) 100. Rent as a Dispersive Force on Population.—Essentially, therefore, rent is a natural social force operating to disperse population, and economize working space, by imposing a tax upon the occupation of the more valuable localities, proportionate to their value for working purposes. This tax is prevented from being a monopoly, in favor of the land-owning class, by the fact that the profits of capital invested in land-owning tend constantly toward equality with the profits on capital invested in other kinds of business. It is prevented also from oppressing the labor, ́or wages, of one part of the world, at the expense of another, by the fact that it is equably balanced, by an equivalent tax for transportation of persons and commodities, against those who seek to escape the rent-tax by locating at a distance from the social centers, but where the products of their industry are not in local demand. This tax of transportation is recorded in the reduced prices of products requiring transportation, at points distant from the centers of consumption or demand, as shown in the following table prepared by the Department of Agriculture. It shows the average production of corn per acre, and its cash value per acre, and average price per bushel at the place where grown, in eighteen Northern States, for 1865: Illinois was in 1865 a corn-growing State, dependent largely on consumers east of the Alleghanies for the disposal of her surplus. From the value of her corn, therefore, was deducted the cost of |