OCR Text |
Show OF THE PROFITS OF CAl'IT.AL. [cH. V. o-reatest facility of production is incapable of pro-b . . clueing high profits, unless capital IS scarce com-pared with labour. But in order to see tnore clearly the powerful effects of the second cause on profits, let us con ... sider it for a moment as operating alone; and suppose, that while the capital of a country continued increasing, its population were checked and kept short of the demand for it, by son1e n1iraculous influence. Under these circun1stances, every sort of gradation might take place in the proportion which capital would bear to labour, and we should see in consequence every sort of gradation take place in the rate of profits. If, in an early period of improven1ent, capital were scarce con1pared with labour, the wages of labour being on this account lovv, while the productive powers of labour, from the fertility of the land, were great, the proportion left for profits would necessarily be very considerable, and the rate of profits would be very high. In general, however, though capital n1ay be said to be scarce in the early periods of cultivation, yet that particular portion of capital, which resolves itself into food, is often plentiful cotnparecl with the population, and high profits and high real wages are . found together. In the n1ost natural state of things this is generally the case, though it is not so when capital is prematurely checked by extravagance, or other causes. But whether we set out from low or high corn wages, the dinli~ution in the rates of profits, from the gradual tn· SEC. II.] OF THE PROFITS OF CAPITAL. 303 crease of capital cotnpared with labour, will retnain undisturbed. As capital at any time increases faster than labour, the profits of capital will fall, and if a progre~ sive increase _of capital were to take place, while the population, by some hidden cause, were prevented from keeping pace with it, not\vithstanding the fertility of the soil and the plenty of food, then profits would be oTadually reduced . b ' until, by successive reductions, the power and will to accun1ulate had ceased to operate. Profi~s in this case would experience exact! y the satne ktnd of progressive diminution as they ~ould by the progressive accumulation of capital 1n .the present state of things; but rent and wages would be very differently affected. Frorn what has before been stated on the subject of rent, the an1ount of it in such a country could not be great. According to the supposition, the progress of the population is retarded, and the number of labourers is ~itnited, while land of considerable fertility ren1a1ns uncultivated. The demand for fertile land therefore, compared with the supply, would be comparatively inconsiderable ; and in reference to the \Vhole of the national produce, the portion which would consist of rent would depend n1ainly upon the gradations of more fertile land that had been cultivated before the population had con1e to a sto~, and upon the value of the produce to be denved from the land that was not cultivated. W~th regard to wages they would continue progressively to rise, and would give the labourer a |