But how does the cultivation of inferior land affect the rate of profits? We have already seen how the worker’s share, the minimum necessary for keeping body and soul together, goes to swell the high price of corn.[352] But the manufacturer cannot transfer the cost of high wages to the consumer, for the rate of wages has no effect on prices. (Labour has, but wages have none.) As a consequence, the capitalist’s share must be correspondingly reduced. We must remember that the workman gains nothing by the high rate of wages, for his consumption of food is limited by nature, but this does not hinder the capitalist losing a great deal by it. And so there must come a time when the necessary wage will have absorbed everything and nothing will remain for profit. There will be a new era in history, for every incentive to accumulate capital will disappear with the extinction of profit. Capital will cease growing, no new lands will be cultivated, and population will be brought to a sudden standstill.[353] The stationary state with its melancholy vistas will be entered upon. Mill has described it in such eloquent terms that we are almost reconciled to the prospect. But it could hardly have been a pleasant matter for Ricardo, who was primarily a financier and had but little concern with philosophy. He was very much attached to his prophecies, and there is a delicate piece of irony in the thought that the tendency of profits towards a minimum should have been first noted by this great representative of capitalism. At the same time he felt a little reassured when he thought of the opposing forces which might check its downward trend and arrest the progress of rent. In both instances the best corrective seemed to lie in the freedom of foreign trade. The general lines of distribution are presented to us in a strikingly simple fashion. The demonstration is neater even than the famous _Tableau économique_, and it has the further merit of being nearer the actual facts as they appeared in Ricardo’s day, for they are no longer quite the same. It may be represented by means of a diagram consisting of three lines. At the top is an ascending line representing rent—the share of Mother Earth. The proprietor’s rent reveals a double increase both of money and kind, for as population and its needs grow it requires an increasing quantity of corn at an increased price. Still, the high price cannot be indefinitely prolonged, for beyond a certain point a high price of corn would arrest the growth of population and at the same time the growth of rent; then it would no longer be necessary to cultivate new lands. In the middle is a horizontal line representing wages—labour’s share. The real wages of labour remain stationary, for it simply receives the quantity of corn necessary to keep it alive. It is true that as the corn is gradually becoming dearer the worker’s nominal wages increase, but with no real benefit to him.