1. Is it possible to do twice the amount of business in any store-room by doubling the stock and the force of clerks?
2. Is it possible to expand a university indefinitely by increasing the force of teachers and the equipment, without enlarging the buildings?
3. Why do men cultivate two acres instead of one? Where land is plentiful, why do not men cultivate two acres instead of one?
4. Are there any things, not free goods, that could be indefinitely increased without increasing difficulty?
5. English farmers raise thirty-five bushels of wheat per acre, Americans perhaps fifteen; why this difference?
6. Why did people go to Dakota and Iowa when there was still room in New England?
7. Why put up a twenty-story building? Why not build a fifty-story one?
Note.—The broad reading here given to the law of diminishing returns is so recent that even the latest texts have recognized it only in a partial manner, defining "the law" in the old terms confined to land. For the old statement see J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1846), Bk. I, ch. XII. Writers even so advanced as Alfred Marshall follow Mill with no essential modification. For a good historical account of the doctrine see Edwin Cannan, History of the Theories of Production and Distribution, pp. 147-182 (1893; 2d ed., with additions, 1903), which advances no positive theory, but makes evident many inconsistencies in the older view. A keen analysis and important contribution to economic thought was made by J. R. Commons, Distribution of Wealth, pp. 116-159 (1895). John B. Clark, in various earlier articles, and in his Distribution of Wealth (1900), has done more than any one else to develop the conception of "a universal law of economic variation." In magazine articles by various writers, the same idea has been developed, but no thorough-going application of it has been made in the available text-books.
Chapter 10. The Theory of Rent
1. Is competition severe in the renting of land in your community?