238 LAND AND LABOR. 



to foreign consumers. To our railroads, our canals, 

 our steamers all our inland transporters from the 

 interior to the seaboard to the commission mer_ 

 chant, the insurer, the speculator, the gambler, the 

 multitudes of middlemen, at least three times as much 

 is paid as to the ocean carriers, by the American pro- 

 ducers, to reach foreign markets. In the interest of 

 foreign trade the American farmers and producers 

 pay a direct tax upon their products of fully four 

 hundred million dollars per annum. A tax greater 

 than the whole cost of our national government. The 

 American farmer receives seventy cents a bushel for 

 his wheat, and the English consumer pays one dollar 

 and fifty cents for the same, the middlemen taking 

 the margin. It is not difficult to see how and where 

 the great railroad kings, with the whole class of mid- 

 dlemen, obtain their colossal fortunes. 



These facts are enough to indicate the tendencies 

 of present development. The number that might be 

 added is inexhaustible. To achieve these results all 

 the resources and devices of the age are taxed to their 

 fullest extent. Mechanical forces* and labor saving 

 machinery, wherever possible, are made to take the 

 ]tlace of muscle. Man's labor has been saved, that is, 

 dispensed with, to such an extent as to make a large 

 portion of mankind either partially or wholly idlers. 

 Competition between the idle and the employed be- 

 t \\i-en producers, carriers, merchants, and all engaged 

 in any and every avocation by which subsistence is 

 obtained is driven to the verge of destruction. 



The struggle for the extremest cheapness has be- 

 come an universal mania. A superintendent of a 



