34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



formation, is certainly warranted by recent experiences. Tims, 

 if the trade between the United Kingdom alone and the leading 

 countries of the East, exclusive of India, continues to increase in 

 the next quarter of a century in the same ratio as it has during 

 the last quarter, when commercial facilities were much less than 

 at present, its aggregate value of $190,000,000 in 1860, and $440,- 

 000,000 in 1885, will swell to $1,038,000,000 in the year 1910 ; and, 

 beyond that date, to an amount that must be left to the imagi- 

 nation. 



That the only possible future for agriculture, prosecuted for 

 the sake of producing the great staples of food, is to be found in 

 large farms, worked with ample capital, especially in the form of 

 machinery, and with labor organized somewhat after the factory 

 system, is coming to be the opinion of many of the best authori- 

 ties, both in the United States and Europe. And as a further 

 part of such a system, it is claimed that the farm must be de- 

 voted to a specialty, or a few specialties, on the ground that it 

 would be almost as fatal to success to admit mixed farming, as 

 it would be to attempt the production of several kinds of manu- 

 factures under one roof and establishment. 



Machinery is already largely employed in connection with 

 the drying and canning of fruit and vegetables, and in the 

 manufacture of wine. In the sowing, harvesting, transporting, 

 and milling of wheat, the utilization has reached a point where 

 further improvement would seem to be almost impossible. In 

 the business of slaughtering cattle and hogs, and rendering their 

 resulting products available for food and other useful purposes, 

 the various processes, involving large expenditure and great di- 

 versity of labor, especially in " curing," succeed each other with 

 startling rapidity, and are, or can be, all carried on under one 

 roof ; and on such a scale of magnitude and with such a degree 

 of economy, that it is said that, if the entire profits of the great 

 slaughtering establishments were limited to the gross receipts 

 from the sale of the beef -tongues in the one case and the pigs' 

 feet in the other, the returns on the capital invested and the 

 business transacted would be eminently satisfactory. It is not, 

 however, so well known that the business of fattening cattle by 

 the so called " factory system," on a most extensive scale, has 

 also been successfuly introduced in the Northwestern and trans- 

 Mississippi States and Territories, and that great firms have at 

 present thousands of cattle gathered under one roof, and under- 

 going the operation of fattening by the most continuous, effect- 

 ive, and economic processes. The results show that one laborer can 

 take care of two hundred steers undergoing the process of grain- 

 feeding for the shambles, in a systematic, thorough manner, with 

 the expenditure of much less time and labor per day than the 



