[Letter] Feb.28,1890,Smith College [to F.H. Giddings]

Feb. 28, 1890, Smith College.

Dear Friend,
      If my frequent
letters are not becoming
a bore I want to ask
one conundrum; viz.
what would be the effect
on the quantity of wheat
produced if we could
introduce a condition like
this; let a large
quantity of good wheat
land be free of rent, not
to entrepreneurs but to
laborers. Let all have a
pro rata share who chose
to come. Subdivide
farms as the inflow of
labor continues till a
balance is attained, and
laborers here get what they do
elsewhere. Provide, among the
assumptions, that this
subdivision can occur
without detriment to production.
Let the simple contraction
of the area farmed by each
man - a la German peasant
cultivation - be the natural
mode of increasing the intensity of
the agriculture. We can assume, if you
wish, a cooperative use of tools of the
expensive kind. Some such things would
bring the assumption somewhere into the
region of possibility; but just now possibility
is of no essential consequence. The question
is what would be the effect of the above
assumption on the amount of the wheat
crop.

       Yours Very Truly,
             J. B. Clark