Note 333 — Chapter III · : THE PESSIMISTS

But the honour of discovering this law, which is so important for an understanding of exchange value, does not belong entirely to Ricardo. Forty years before a humble Scotch farmer named Anderson had observed the phenomenon and given a very satisfactory analysis of it in his book Observations on the Means of Exciting a Spirit of National Industry (1777). “Now as the expense of cultivating the least fertile soil is as great or greater than that of the most fertile field, it necessarily follows that if an equal quantity of corn, the produce of each field, can be sold at the same price, the profit on cultivating the most fertile soil must be much greater than that of cultivating the other, and as this continues to decrease as the sterility increases, it must at length happen that the expense of cultivating some of the inferior soils will equal the values of the whole produce.” (Quoted by Jevons, Theory of Political Economy, p. 229.) Anderson’s name was forgotten until quite recently, when it attracted a certain amount of attention among the pioneers of Ricardo. Ricardo himself does not seem to be aware of his existence; at least he never quotes him. The only two writers mentioned by Ricardo are Malthus and West.