448 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



consequences as in the case of wheat. On the great wheat-fields of 

 the Territory of Dakota, where machinery is applied to agriculture to 

 such an extent that the requirement for manual labor has been reduced 

 to a minimum, the annual product of one man's labor, working to the 

 best advantage, is understood to be now equivalent to the produc- 

 tion of 5,500 bushels of wheat. In the great mills of Minnesota, the 

 labor of another one man for a year, under similar conditions as regards 

 machinery, is in like manner equivalent to the conversion of this unit 

 of 5,500 bushels of wheat into a thousand barrels of flour, leaving 500 

 bushels for seed-purposes ; and although the conditions for analysis of 

 the next step in the way of results are more difficult, it is reasonably 

 certain that the year's labor of one and a half men more or at the 

 most two men employed in railroad transportation, is equivalent to 

 putting this thousand barrels of flour on a dock in New York ready 

 for exportation ; where the addition of a fraction of a cent a pound 

 to the price will further transport and deliver it at almost any port of 

 Europe.* 



Here, then, we have the labor of three men for one year, working 

 with machinery, resulting in producing all the flour that a thousand 

 other men ordinarily eat in a year, allowing one barrel of flour for 

 the average consumption of each adult. Before such a result the 

 question of wages paid in the different branches of flour production 

 and transportation becomes an insignificant factor in determining a 

 market ; and, accordingly, American flour grown in Dakota, and 

 ground in Minneapolis, from a thousand to fifteen hundred miles 

 from the nearest seaboard, by the labor of men paid from a dol- 

 lar and a half to two dollars and a half per clay for their labor, is sold 

 in European markets at rates which are determinative of the prices 

 which Russian peasants, Egyptian "fellahs," and Indian "ryots" 

 can obtain in the same markets for similar grain grown by them on 

 equally good soil, and with from fifteen to twenty cents per day wages 

 for their labor. 



A great number of other similar and equally remarkable experi- 

 ences, derived from almost every department of industry except the 

 handicrafts, might be presented ; but it would seem that enough evi- 

 dence has been offered to prove abundantly that, in the increased con- 



* When the wheat reaches New York city, and comes into the possession of a great 

 baker, who has established the manufacture of bread on a large scale, and who sells the 

 best of bread to the working-people of New York at the lowest possible price, we find 

 that one thousand barrels of flour can be converted into bread and sold over the counter 

 by the work of three persons for one year. Let us add to the six and a half men already 

 named the work of another man six months, or a half a man one year, to keep the ma- 

 chinery in repair, and our modern miracle is, that seven men suffice to give one thousand 

 persons all the bread they customarily consume in one year. If to these we add three for 

 the work of providing fuel and other materials to the railroad and the bnker, our final 

 result is that ten men working one year serve bread to one thousand." Distribution of 

 Products, Edward Atkinson. 



