10 - 
capital-coefficient will not easily be possible without a 
fall in the profit rate. Indeed if new methods or new products 
are developped and appear at first to involve a greater 
capital-coefficient than the usual one, then the application 
may often be delayed until the engineers have developped a 
sufficiently large scale version of the method to keep the 
capital-coefficient down to the usual level of the industry 
in question. This is not to say that the capital-coefficient 
is everywhere the same, but in fact in manufacturing it varies 
only within limits which are not very wide; it is mostly below 
one, except in basic iron and steel. Railways, public utilities 
and agriculture have capital-output ratios considerably above 
7) 
unity. 
The discussion of the relation of capital-coefficient and 
profit rate in Chapter III is obviously related to the 
discussion of the declining profit rate and the increasing 
organic composition of capital in the work of Karl Marx. 
Here also the objection against the historical reality of 
an increasing organic composition can be made, and here also 
one is tempted to re-interprets The (anticipated) consequence 
of a declining profit rate should rule out from the very 
beginning any methods which increase the organic composition 
of capital. 
7) R.N. Grosse, The Structure of Capital, in Studies in the 
Structure of the American Economy. Ed.ty. Leontlef 
v7 
New York 1953