A well-known American writer holds that the increase in the number of labourers does not _tend_ to diminish wages, but the converse. What in his opinion causes the tendency of ‘the reward of labour’ to a minimum in spite of increase in producing-power, is that rent increases in a still greater ratio. The result is much the same, as far as the labourer is concerned, and it proceeds, whether directly, as is commonly held, or indirectly, as the American writer holds, from there being three men to house and feed where there had been only two. If, however, it be really the matter of rent or interest which affects the price of labour, then the American citizen has all the more reason to regard with attention the other portion of the stream, namely, the flow of British capital for investment in land and cattle in the West. We do not know the aggregate capital of the numerous Ranche and other Companies which have been lately formed, but it is enormous; and with private investments as well, the total British capital occupied in them cannot be short of twenty millions sterling, and probably is even considerably more. The actual amount is not material to our argument. The effect of this tremendous diversion of capital is twofold. It is increasing the value of older estates by the absorption of cheap competitive lots, and it is arousing in the Americans themselves a species of earth-hunger which promises to be very keen. There are thoughtful, observing men on the other side of the Atlantic, who, noting the disfavour into which investments in railroads have fallen, because of their comparatively poor returns—and also because of the distrust begotten by their scandalous management—and who noting, also, the rapidity with which English capital is leading the way—predict that America is on the eve of the most tremendous land ‘boom’ ever known. That means, in plain English, that the enhancement in the value of land, legitimately produced by settlement and cultivation—in other words, by the employment of actual capital and labour—will have an artificial enhancement of indefinite extent added to it _by the action of speculation_. In all commodities dealt in by man, there is an intrinsic value and a speculative value. When the speculative value becomes inflated above the level of intrinsic value, there ensues a period of dangerous excitement, which invariably ends in collapse and disaster. This is especially the case with land, and it is precisely towards such a critical time that America seems verging.