338 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



of an hour ; it would require a series of hours to lay before you 

 results after they were fairly garnered. 



My aim now is a far humbler one. It is simply to call your 

 attention to some of the salient points in the case and to offer a 

 few suggestions which you can follow into detail at your leisure. 



At the outset I would remark that probably very few of us 

 realize sufficiently how great are the changes which have passed 

 upon us — as a community — within the last dozen years. Al- 

 though not so upturning and radical throughout the North as they 

 are at the South, where besides many others, the status of the 

 laborer has changed from that of an unpaid chattel slave to that 

 of a wage-receiving freeman, these changes are nevertheless very 

 great and they have effected astonishing results. 



With the advent of war large numbers of able-bodied men were 

 called from peaceful pursuits to take up arms. The ranks of 

 producers were thus greatly thinned ; but consumption of food 

 was not only maintained but increased by all the waste and loss 

 incident to war. It was inevitable that the price of products 

 should be rapidly enhanced. The wonder is that the demand 

 should have been met at any price by the few producers who 

 remained to labor. How was it accomplished ? In very large 

 measure that demand was supplied by the aid of labor-saving 

 implements. In four years time old ones were perfected, new 

 ones were invented, and both old and new were manufactured and 

 bought and introduced to use in aid of production in unparalleled 

 numbers and to an extent which could only have been accom- 

 plished during many years of peace. By their aid men past bear- 

 ing arms, or otherwise not " able-bodied " with the help of lads as 

 yet unripe for the hardships of warfare were enabled to feed their 

 families at home and their kinsmen in the field. After a time the 

 war ended, and with returning peace many returned to their 

 homes, but they returned to find the demand for farm products 

 pretty fully supplied ; and more production without increased 

 demand, and with abated loss and waste, necessarily brought about 

 a fall in prices. Thus we see that the very instrumentality upon 

 which we have prided ourselves as the greatest help in practical 

 agriculture has been the means of rendering unnecessary, for 

 production, the labor of a vast army of able-bodied men. 



Meanwhile an enormous amount of money, or what passed for 

 money, had come into circulation. It was possessed, not only by a 

 few in large amounts, but in sums of a magnitude wholly unaccus- 



