or manufacturer and agrees with what is denominated the ordinary profits on the stock of the farmer. Both together make the ordinary profits of two capitals employed in a manufactory, as, in the other case, the rent of the landlord and the revenue of the farmer compose the ordinary profits of two capitals employed in the cultivation of a farm.
The rent, therefore, accruing to the proprietor of the land, far from being a criterion of exclusive productiveness, as has been argued, is no criterion even of superior productiveness. The question must still be, whether the surplus, after defraying expenses of a given capital, employed in the purchase and improvement of a piece of land, is greater or less than that of a like capital employed in the prosecution of a manufactory; or whether the whole value produced from a given capital and a given quantity of labor employed in one way be greater or less than the whole value produced from an equal capital and an equal quantity of labor employed in the other way; or rather, perhaps, whether the business of agriculture or that of manufactures will yield the greatest product, according to a compound ratio of the quantity of the capital and the quantity of labor which are employed in the one or in the other.
The solution of either of these questions is not easy; it involves numerous and complicated details, depending on an accurate knowledge of the objects to be compared. It is not known that the comparison has ever yet been made upon sufficient data, properly ascertained and analyzed. To be able to make it on the present occasion with satisfactory precision would demand more previous inquiry and investigation than there has been hitherto either leisure or opportunity to accomplish.
Some essays, however have been made toward acquiring the requisite information which have rather served to throw doubt upon than to confirm the hypothesis under examination. But it ought to be acknowledged that they have been too little diversified and are too imperfect to authorize a definite conclusion either way, leading, rather, to probable conjecture than to certain deduction. They render it probable that there are various branches of manufactures in which a given capital will yield a greater total product and a considerably greater net product than an equal capital invested in the purchase and improvement of lands, and that there are also some branches in which both the gross and the net produce will exceed that of agricultural industry, according to a compound ratio of capital and labor. But it is on this last point that there appears to be the greatest room for doubt. It is far less difficult to infer generally that the net produce of capital engaged in manufacturing enterprises is greater than that of capital engaged in agriculture.
The foregoing suggestions are not designed to inculcate an opinion that manufacturing industry is more productive than that of agriculture. They are intended rather to show that the reverse of this proposition is not ascertained; that the general arguments which are brought to establish it are not satisfactory, and consequently that a supposition of the superior productiveness of tillage ought to be no obstacle to listening to any substantial inducements to the encouragement of manufactures, which may be otherwise perceived to exist, through an apprehension that they may have a tendency to divert labor from a more to a less profitable employment.
