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Previous articleNext article FreeBack CoverPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreKeynes and His Impact on Female Labor SupplyIn Part II of the History Tripos then one read one’s Special Subject, Modern History, and one or two other subjects, at choice. I read History of Political Ideas, and Economics. I attended the lectures of, and wrote essays for, ‘young Mr. Keynes’. (Dr. Keynes was the Cambridge Registrary.)Mr. Keynes explained the Law of Diminishing Returns, and illustrated it by its effects on a woman dusting a room. For the first three minutes she dusts the tops of tables and other exposed surfaces; she gets off a lot of dust in the first three minutes. Then she dusts the mantelpiece and objects like chair legs; she gets much less dust off in the second three minutes. Then she gets down and dusts under the cupboard, under bookshelves and in the finicky places. She gets very little dust, proportionately for her time.I have never spent more than three minutes in dusting a room since, because of the Law of Diminishing Returns! Young Mr. Keynes (J.M. Keynes) must have influenced a lot of Newnhamites!—M. Deanesly, 1909[Ann Phillips, ed., A Newnham Anthology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 85–86. The book is not specific about the original source of the quote except to say that it came from the Newnham College archives; it may have been drawn from the 1909 or 1911 issue of the student magazine, Thersites.](Suggested by Ailsa Röell) Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Political Economy Volume 129, Number 12December 2021 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/718226 Views: 438Total views on this site © 2021 The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.