70 N. n. STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



and the northern United States is the greater efficiency of 

 the laboring, man in the latter. This arises partly from 

 physical causes. Amoni:; the former are the superior in- 

 telligence and ingenuHy of the American laborer, and his 

 consciousness that he is performing a voluntary contract 

 for an adequate consideration fixed by his own agreement, 

 and not by the pleasure of an arbitrary feudal lord, or by 

 external circumstances which allow him no option but half- 

 remunerated labor or starvation; among the latter, are 

 the more nutritious diet of our farmers, and the great 

 superiority of the tools and mechanical appliances employ- 

 ed in American agriculture. Thus, in many countries of 

 Europe, the hoe has a handle but tliree feet in lengthy with 

 a blade of half the width and thrice the weight of our 

 own, while the axe is scarcely half as heavy as that which 

 our wood-choppers wield with such powerful effect ; the 

 rake and the pitch-fork arc of the clumsiest fashion, and 

 the latter wholly of wood ; the scythe blade is but two 

 feet and a half in length, broad and heavy, forged of soft 

 iron, and sharpened, not by grinding or whetting, but by 

 hammering the edge on a stone, another stone often serv- 

 ing as the hammer; the snath is straight and with a single 

 handle, the left hand grasi)ing the end of the snath ; and 

 so ignorant are the peasants of mechanical powers, par- 

 ticularly in southern Austria, that I have seen four men 

 exert for a long time their utmost strength in trying to 

 shove a stone over the rail of a wagon body on a pair of 

 skids, when one man, by raising the lower end of one skid 

 with each hand, would have tilted the stone into the wagon 

 with entire facility. 



Although public works of internal improvement do not 

 strictly belong to the subject I have proposed to myself, 

 yet they are intimately connected with the progress of 

 agriculture ; and the development which they alone can give 

 to the physical resources of any extended territory, essen- 

 tially cfTects every branch of rural economy. They may, 



