“Because it often answers better to improve land already cultivated than to spend money on wastes. Of late years, agriculture has been much studied in this country, and means have been discovered by which lands that have been under the plough for hundreds[hundreds] of years have been made to produce more by half than in old times. This is the way that Mr. Malton grew rich. If there had been nothing more to be done with his fields than formerly, he would probably have taken in the common some years ago: but his time and money have been occupied in trying new methods of cultivation, which have answered very well and enabled him to increase his capital, notwithstanding the badness of the times, from which he was no more exempt than other people. Having brought his estate into a high degree of cultivation, he is now able to add to it.”
“And to fix his capital,” said I, “and wait for returns in a way which is not practicable for a small capitalist. Poor Williams, if he had been alive now, must have had his capital reproduced immediately or have been at a stand.”
The sergeant smiled while he observed that he saw he was not the only person who had conversed with me on the employment of capital. I told him how often I had listened to conversations between my father and his friends on the philosophy of the changes which were taking place in our village.
“There is another way,” said I, “in which it seems to me easy to prove that there is the best economy in large farms. If industry is limited by capital, and if a capital grows faster in proportion to its increase, a large capital must afford increased employment at a quicker rate than several small ones. Do you see what I mean?”
“Yes, miss; and I think you perfectly right. Here is a case. Mr. Malton began, we will say, with a farm of three hundred acres, and three neighbours with each a farm of one hundred, his capital being just equal to that of the three together. Mr. Malton would have the advantage, in the first place, of having his capital better invested. His one set of farm buildings would require less fixed capital than their three sets, though his might be treble the size. His fencing and the disposal of his fields might be managed to better advantage. He might proportion his stock and instruments more exactly than they could to the work to be performed—finding, for instance, that five horses could do the work which it would require a pair of horses on each of the three small farms to do. The fixed capital thus saved, Mr. Malton could employ at once in improving his land, and thus preparing for a further increase of capital; while his neighbours could only go on as they did before. When these improvements bring in their profits, he has a further sum to lay out in the employment of labour, and the fruits of that labour enrich him still more; and all this time, his three neighbours are left further and further behind, though their smaller capital may be growing in its due proportion. At the best, at the end of a few years, they can only make the most of their one or two or three hundred acres, while he supplies society with the produce of his one or two or three thousand.”
“Do you know,” I asked, “with how much land Mr. Malton began the world, and how much he has now?”
“I rather think he began upon six or seven hundred acres; and now he has some thousands under his own eye. One of his tenants holds a farm of fifteen hundred, and another of twelve hundred acres; and these men adopt all Mr. Malton’s improvements that their capital will allow, and have so increased the productiveness of their land as to be truly public benefactors.”
“Poor Norton will hardly have any chance of improving his little fortune in such a neighbourhood,” said I.
The sergeant shook his head, and said that he had tried to explain to Norton that as industry is proportioned to capital, it must answer better to let the labour of a society like ours to a large capitalist than to split it into portions which could not yield so full an aggregate return; but that Norton liked the idea of being a proprietor, and would listen to no evil bodings.
“If you were to go abroad, again, sergeant,” said I, “what would you do for want of somebody to advise? I suppose you found no foreigners so ready to look up to you as we are in your native village?”[village?”]