434 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ton from London to Manchester in 1825 now costs one cent. Count- 

 ing the macadamized roads, the new and improved wagons, the canals, 

 the river and ocean steamboats, the increase in the number, and the 

 improvements in the size, pattern, rigging, and speed of sailing-vessels, 

 and the railroads, there is no exaggeration in saying that the facilities 

 for domestic and foreign commerce have increased one hundred-fold. 



And then the gain in the materials for commerce has been immense. 

 Steam-engines furnish a power estimated to be equal to that of 

 300,000,000 working-men, and the saving of labor by other machines 

 is probably not less. The production of cloth and the manufacture 

 of iron have been revolutionized, and the annual consumption of the 

 most useful of metals has increased from 200,000 to 12,000,000 tons. 

 The industrial arts generally have made so much progress, that no ex- 

 tensive branch of business is now conducted as it was in the middle 

 of the las^ century. Our houses, our tools, our clothing, our food, our 

 trades, and our professions, are different in many important points. 

 The farmers have thrown aside the wooden plough, the sickle, and the 

 flail, which were their chief implements in 1750. The wooden mould- 

 board was excellent as compared with the barbaric plough which had 

 no mould-board, and did not throw a furrow to one side, but merely 

 scratched the ground, making a ridge on each side of the plough-point. 

 While oak was the material, the farmer usually hewed or chopped out 

 his own board, and fastened it on his plough ; but both the shape and 

 the adjustment were bad, and the surface, from the nature of the 

 material, would never " scour " well in the moist earth. I accord to 

 Scotland, on what appears to be a preponderance of evidence, the 

 credit of producing the first iron mould-board, though the claim is con- 

 tested by the United States, where the invention was first generally 

 appreciated, and perfected by various small improvements. The 

 superiority of the iron plough in form, adjustment, and surface, made 

 a vast saving in friction ; the furrow was turned over more regularly ; 

 the weeds were killed more thoroughly; the pulverization was better; 

 and the working capacity of the ploughman and the productive ca- 

 pacity of the soil were each nearly if not quite doubled ; so that now, 

 France, with a smaller number of men engaged in the business, yields 

 three times as much wheat at an average harvest as it did about 1770. 

 Since the farmers are the largest class of producers, and the basis of 

 national prosperity, and since ploughing is the most important part of 

 their labor, the invention of the iron mould-board deserves to be con- 

 sidered one of the greatest contributions to modern civilization, rank- 

 ing next to the steam-engine and to movable type, in its influence on 

 the general condition of mankind. 



The sickle was superseded by the cradle, -with which the farmer 

 could cut four times as much, and that by the reaping-machine, with 

 which a man can cut five times as much, as with the cradle. The 

 scythe gave way to the mowing-machine, and the flail to the thrash- 



