420 AGRICULTURAL PKOGRESS. 



engine ; all, indeed, are confined to one special manipula- 

 tion. 



The several families, except those who left their he- 

 reditary employment and emigrated to some other place, 

 are tenants of wooden boxes put up close to the road for 

 the economizing of land. All these are in exact uniform- 

 ity, " model tenements," stuck up into the air, with- 

 out garden or enclosure, and owned by the corporation. 

 The majority of the farmers, flattered with the hope of 

 securing their wealth, invested all their money in the cor- 

 poration stock, which they were soon induced to sell at 

 immense sacrifice, because the extravagance and dishon- 

 esty of the company's agents absorbed all their profits. 

 and cut down their dividends. In less than ten years 

 every one of these independent farmers was a poor man ; 

 and the village children, who lived as free as the birds of 

 the air in their former rural homes, now work in pla- 

 toons upon such parts of farm labor as they are able to 

 perform. Before the village was sold and converted into 

 a mammoth farm, you might see the little children with 

 their satchels going regularly to the district schools, clad 

 in neat and various attire, skipping and playing on the 

 road, full of gladness and freedom. Now they are called 

 up in the morning by the ringing of a bell. They rise, 

 they work, they eat, they go to bed, and they sleep to the 

 sound of a bell that tolls dismally in their weary ears the 

 knell of all their former joys. 



In the story of this once happy village and its inhab- 

 itants we may read the fate of the whole country if the 

 steam-engine should ever be introduced into the opera- 

 tions of farming, which would, as an inevitable conse- 

 quence, be carried on by associated capital. Such a 

 class as our independent laboring farmers the only un- 

 degenerated class in any civilized country would cease 

 to exist. If it be progress or improvement to convert all 



