But it is of immeasurably greater importance that high rents deter the people from abusing the soil in an anti-economic way; that they compel men to settle about the centers of commerce, to improve the means of transportation, and under certain circumstances to engage in the work of colonization; while, otherwise, idleness would soon reconcile itself to the heaping together of large swarms of men.[159-3] The anticipation of rent may render possible the construction of railroads, which enable the land to yield that very anticipated rent. [Footnote 159-1: "Rent is a tax levied by the landowners as monopolists." (_Hopkins_, Great Britain for the last forty Years, 1834.) For a very remarkable armed and successful resistance of farmers in the state of New York to the claims for rent of the Rensselaer family, represented by the government, see _Wappäus_ Nord Amerika, 734.] [Footnote 159-2: _Malthus_, Additions to the Essay on Population, 1817, III, ch. 10; compare also _Verri_, Meditazioni, XXIV, 3. The Physiocrates call the landowners _classe disponible_, since, as they may live without labor, they are best adapted to military service, the civil service, etc., either in person or by defraying the expenses of those engaged in them. (_Turgot_, Sur la Formation etc., § 15; Questions sur la Chine, 5.)] [Footnote 159-3: Well discussed by _Schäffle_, Theorie, 65, 72, 83. _Malthus_ considers the capital and labor expended in agriculture more productive than any other, because they produce not only the usual interest and wages, but also rent. If, therefore, the manufacturing and commercial profit of a country = 12 per cent., and the profit of capital employed in agriculture = 10 per cent., a corn law which compelled the capital engaged in manufactures and commerce to be devoted to agriculture would be productive of advantage to the national husbandry in general, if the increase in rent should amount to about 3 per cent. (On the Effects of the Corn Laws and of a Rise or Fall in the Price of Corn on the Agriculture and the general Wealth of the Country, 1815. The Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of Restricting the Importation of Foreign Corn, 1815.) Compare _supra_, § 55, and the detailed rectification in _Roscher_, Nationalökonomik des Ackerbaues, etc., § 159 ff.] CHAPTER III. WAGES. SECTION CLX. THE PRICE OF COMMON LABOR.