1882.] HOME MANUFACTURES. 195 



elude, as I have, that home manufactures of the one or another 

 stamp, get their best recruits from the off-shoots of ingenious and 

 self-respecting agriculture. There is in agricultural human nature 

 a tendency to develop in the direction of manufactures. The best 

 mill-operatives we import are farmers and gardeners, as well as 

 mechanics, and we" are breaking, to-day, the family manufactures 

 of entire neighborhoods in the north of Europe, to fill vacancies 

 at our power spindles and shuttles. It is not for the intere.t of 

 the State to push things so far in this direction, that a few may 

 grow very rich while many fall into slavish ignorance and 

 poverty. 



Even while the guns in the great battle of human liberty were 

 still echoing there were traitorous managers, and legislators who 

 did no less than forge anew the bonds of human slavery. The 

 national fiat which liberated the negro forever upon this continent, 

 set free also the capital which could invest itself directly in a sim- 

 ple, ignorant man, and left it to lay hold of the ways and means, 

 and natural advantages by which simple and innocent men must 

 always work. Mr. Atkinson tells us that for every million of 

 dollars invested at the North, under the old order of things, the 

 South was expending one and a half millions in land and slaves. 

 The statesman, who is at the same time a farmer, must ponder 

 over the profits of manufactures which wreck in the end, both 

 land and labor. Continual levies upon new, virgin soil, north or 

 south, are continually required where the loom and spindle are 

 taken from the hands of the common people. 



The emancipation act relieved capital of a burden, for what cares 

 any tyrant for owning the bodies of people if he can control the 

 land they stand on, the tools they know how to use, in part, 

 and the water that falls from the clouds and runs ciu-bed by the 

 will of an autocrat ? As a young man 1 thought little of these 

 things, but now I can speak feelingly with our third President — 

 that "eternal vigilance," and nothing else, "is the price of 

 Hberty." 



Verily, it is time for a "new departure in agriculture," when 

 railways assume to control states, and corporations claim " the same 

 rights as railways." It is time for farmers to show their hands in 

 associated work. It is time — I might say — for every family by 

 ingenious legality, to take advantage of the corporation laws, and 

 make head against the organic tyranny of monopoly in whatever 

 shape it appears. 



