AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS. 417 



the moral and physical welfare of the people is not to be 

 desired. But it may be asked by some jealous friend of 

 progress, if it is right to refuse to agriculture those aids 

 which have built up our manufactures ? I reply, that we 

 should refuse to agriculture any aid which is not benefi- 

 cial to the agriculturist ; for the farmer is of more impor- 

 tance than his crops. Let us not increase the products of 

 labor by any means that will degrade man. 



To illustrate the consequences of this system of agri- 

 cultural progress, we will apply it to an imagined case. 

 We will suppose that in some indefinite period of the 

 future, when steam -farm ing by associated capital has 

 become nearly universal, there remains in a certain part 

 of the country one of those farming villages which are 

 now so common in our happy land. The farmers in this 

 place are intelligent workingmen and small land propri- 

 etors, who have but little wealth except their houses, 

 lands, and stock, and support themselves by industry and 

 honest trade. After steam-ploughs, steam-rakes, steam- 

 mowing-machines, and other magnificent improvements 

 of the same kind, have swept over the country, they arrive 

 lastly at this antiquated village, where labor is free, and 

 where the farmers are so far behind the times as to own 

 the lands they till, and carry on farming as in the present 

 age of political and social equality. 



These industrious farmers have ascertained by bitter 

 experience that by using hand-implements and horse 

 and cattle power in the operations of farming, they can- 

 not compete with the great agricultural corporations. 

 The agent of a new company, chartered with a hundred 

 millions of capital, offers to these unhappy men a price 

 for their farms, which, though far less than their original 

 value, they feel obliged to accept, especially as a promise 

 accompanies the offer that they shall be employed as 

 laborers on the soil, under the direction of the officers of 



18* A A 



