It is therefore extraordinarily difficult at present to know what happens, or rather what would happen if it were not prevented, when a country reaches " the stage of diminishing returns "; what precisely it is which comes into operation, for obviously the diminishing returns are the results, not the cause; or how commodities " obey " a law which is always " suspended."
Possibly the present generation of English industrial history will furnish many illustrations of the law of diminishing returns.
Closely related to the law of diminishing returns is the Theory of Rent.
The uneasiness caused by the excessive dependence of Great Britain upon the United States for cotton, coupled with the Recent belief that shortages of supply are more frequent than R they ought to be, and the fear that diminishing returns attempts to open may operate in America, occasioned the formation in England of the British Cotton Growing Association on.
It is the law of diminishing returns from land, involving as it does - though only hypothetically - the prospect of a continuously increasing difficulty in obtaining the necessary sustenance for all the members of a society, that gives the principal importance to population as an economic factor.
