46 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



by the rich, are but necessai'ies to the poor. About the time of our 

 Revolutionary War, Arthur Young, a practical agriculturist in England, 

 made it his business to travel about the country to consult with farmers 

 and examine farms. His efforts to awaken an interest in the pursuit he 

 loved were eminently successful, and one of the great results of his 

 endeavors was to set the forming world a thinking, and to induce a 

 thorough investigation of the properties of soils, and of the best mode 

 of improving them. From this time the advance in agriculture has been 

 immense, one of its chief aids having been the perfection to which agri- 

 cultural machinery has been brought. 



What giant strides have been made in the management of the farm, 

 and in the invention of machinery for the saving of labor, since the time 

 when the sickle was only used to cut, and the flail to thresh the grain ! 

 Within the last thirty years more has been accomplished in the great 

 work of supplying the constantly increasing population of the world 

 with the cereal products of the soil than had been done during the nearly 

 six thousand years which preceded them. Some one has said that he 

 who causes two blades of grass to grow where one grew before is a pub- 

 lic benefactor. Can we not say, then, that McCormick,. and Manny, and 

 Pitt, and those other inventors of agricultural machinery who have 

 added so much to the yield of breadstuff's in our country, are true bene- 

 factors of the human race ? Are there any still left who doubt the policy 

 of this wholesale introduction of labor saving machinery to the wants 

 of the farm, lest manual labor shall become a drug? To such, I would 

 say, be not alarmed; add what you will to the individual or general 

 wealth of a country, and you only develop a demand for labor at remu- 

 nerative wages. Man's desires increase in proportion, a compound one, 

 to his ability for gratifying them. There has never been a period in the 

 history of mankind so fruitful in all the productions of the earth as the 

 one in which we live, and no period when the laboring man has reaped 

 richer benefits as the reward of his toil. In our country there is a con- 

 stant and enormous increase in the products of the soil, and a corres- 

 ponding increase in the demand for labor. 



In illustration, the increase in the wheat crop in the United States 

 from eighteen hundred and fifty to eighteen hundred and sixty was over 

 seventy millions of bushels, while the increase of corn was more than 

 two hundred and thirty millions of bushels. The increase in the value 

 of farming implements during the same period was in the neighborhood 

 of one hundred millions of dollars. The value of live stock has increased 

 in the same time five hundred millions. With these data, it is safe to 

 estimate that the increased value of farm productions alone in all the 

 States and Territories, between eighteen hundred and sixty and eighteen 

 hundred and seventy, would more than pay the entire cost to the North 

 of the present rebellion. The increase in the value of farms between 

 eighteen hundred and fifty and eighteen hundred and sixty, in the two 

 agricultural States of Illinois and Indiana, was about five hundred and 

 fifty millions of dollars, while in the whole United States the increase 

 was considerably more than three thousand millions. 



With the rate of taxation enjoyed during the last year or more by the 

 people of Sacramento applied to the States of Indiana and Illinois for 

 the next five years, these two farming States, by themselves, would pay 

 taxes sufficient to wipe out the whole National debt, after a bitter war 

 of two and a half years. 



From these facts, we can see how, with our free institutions of the 

 North, the triumphs of peace go hand in hand with the victories of war. 



