Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen · 1914
Schullern’s review presents di Nola’s agrarian economics through selected theoretical claims and closes with a favorable assessment. The reviewed study appeared as an offprint from the Giornale degli Economisti. Its organizing concern is the interaction of productive factors under contemporary agricultural conditions:
Die Arbeit untersucht die Faktoren der agrarischen Produktion in ihrer gegenseitigen Wirksamkeit, mit Rücksicht auf den heutigen Entwicklungsgrad der Landwirtschaft und ihr Verhältnis zum Markt und zur Industrie.
English translation: The work investigates the factors of agricultural production in their reciprocal operation, with regard to the present degree of development of agriculture and its relation to the market and to industry.
Schullern highlights an explanation of farming systems, rents, and land distribution through the quantitative and qualitative combinations of productive factors. Human labor is singled out as the most complex factor. This relational approach connects agricultural organization to markets and industry rather than treating land as an isolated determinant.
The review briefly notes di Nola’s position on Malthus, whose population theory had renewed relevance amid concern over declining birth rates, but gives greater attention to diminishing returns. In Schullern’s account, di Nola finds this law in both agriculture and manufacturing. It becomes effective beyond a variable saturation threshold, and its effects depend on the efficacy of individual factors and their combinations. Declining usefulness of one factor creates opportunities to use others more effectively. The threshold itself is historically mutable:
Der technische und wissenschaftliche Fortschritt hat die Tendenz, den Sättigungspunkt in die Ferne zu rücken.
English translation: Technical and scientific progress has the tendency to push the point of saturation off into the distance.
Technical and scientific progress thus delays saturation without abolishing diminishing returns. Schullern next summarizes di Nola’s engagement with Ricardo: rents ultimately arise from impediments to free competition among productive factors, some naturally given and others artificially created. This shifts attention from land alone to the conditions governing competition.
The final substantive discussion concerns landed property and agriculture’s socioeconomic milieu, chiefly in Russia, England, Italy, and France. Schullern emphasizes the distinction between the size of property holdings and that of operating units, together with the problem of defining size classes. The review links production theory, rent, and agrarian structure in a compact, appreciative exposition. Its purpose is to stimulate interest through representative propositions, without developing an extended critique of their validity.
This work was divided into 1 sections when it entered the library's research corpus—an apparatus for search and citation, not necessarily the author's own table of contents. Each title opens its summary.
Put a question to this work; the Librarian answers from its 1 sections and cites the passage.
Ask the Librarian