LAND AND LABOR. 



CHAPTER I. 



MACHINERY IN AGRICULTURE. 



T^HE eminent French Archseologist, M. Louis Fi- 

 GUIER, in his "L'Homme Primitif," says that 

 in the Stone Age, before metals were known, all the 

 efforts of man " must have tended to one sole aim - 

 that of insuring his daily subsistence." So it is at 

 this day for the large majority of mankind. The long 

 ages that have followed that period, with the marvel- 

 lous developments of civilization - the discovery of 

 metals, the construction and improvement of tools 

 and machinery of every nature that have increased 

 more than an hundred fold man's power of producing 

 all that enters int'o his daily sustenance and comfort 

 have not changed the fact that he still has but the 

 " one sole aim that of insuring his daily subsist- 

 ence." The ratio of failures to achieve that object 

 could not have been greater in the Stone Age than in 

 the present ; and never before, in any age, were prac- 

 tically one half of mankind forced out of all produc- 

 tive pursuits into idleness and destitution. 



