We now come to the question how it is possible to guarantee the equal right of everyone to equally fertile land. This problem also is solvable in the simplest manner by the free mobility of labour involved in the principle of free association. As everywhere else in the world, there was in Freeland richer and poorer land; but as more workers were attracted to the better land than to the worse, and as, according to a well-known economic law, a greater expenditure of labour upon an equal extent of land is followed by _relatively diminishing_ returns, so the individual worker obtained no higher net profit per hour of labour on the best land than upon the worst land which could be cultivated at all. On the Dana plateau, for example, by the expenditure of 32 hours of labour 48 cwt. of wheat could be produced per acre; in Eden Vale the same expenditure of labour would produce merely 36 cwt. Therefore, as the cwt. of wheat was worth 3s. 1-1/2d., and 1-1/2d. was sufficient to cover all expenses, the land association in the Dana plateau had at the end of the year a return of 4s. 6d. for every hour of work, and, after deduction of tax and repayment of capital, 2s. 9d. for division among the members. The members of the Eden Vale association, on the other hand, had only 2s. per hour of labour to divide among the members; and as careful investigation proved that this difference was due neither to accidental uncongeniality of the weather nor to a less amount of labour, but to the character of the soil, the consequence was that in the next year the newly arrived agriculturists preferred the better land of the Dana plateau. There was now an average expenditure of 42 hours of labour to the acre in the Dana plateau, but in Eden Vale only 24; yet in the former place the additional 10 hours of labour did not yield the 1-1/2 cwt. per hour, as was the case when the expenditure of labour was only 32 hours, but merely a scant 3 qrs.; that is, the returns did not rise from 48 cwt. to 63 cwt., but merely to 55 cwt.--sank therefore to 1.34 cwt. per hour of labour. The consequence was that the returns, notwithstanding the considerable increase in the price of grain due to the improved means of communication, rose merely to 5s., of which 3s. per hour of labour was available for division among the members. In Eden Vale, on the other hand, the gross returns were lessened merely 3 cwt. by the withdrawal of eight hours of labour per acre; the produce therefore now was 33 cwt. for 24 hours of labour, or 1.37 cwt. per hour of labour. The Eden Vale association therefore numbered a trifle more than that of Dana; and as Eden Vale was a more desirable place of residence, and had more conveniences than the Dana plateau, the stream of agriculturists flowed back to Eden Vale until, after two other harvests, there remained a difference of profit of about five per cent. in favour of the Dana plateau, and this advantage, with slight variations, continued permanently.