HIS LIFE AND WORK 



lands, the problem of slavery, and the develop- 

 ment of the West. The hardy, victorious little 

 nation began to talk less and work more; and 

 so by a natural evolution of thought the era 

 of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson 

 came to an end, and the era of Robert Fulton 

 and Peter Cooper and Cyrus Hall McCormick 

 was in its dawn. 



From 1810 to 1820 there was a rush to the 

 land. Twenty million acres were sold, in most 

 cases for two dollars an acre. Thousands of 

 men who had been sailors turned their backs 

 on the sea and learned to till the soil. Town 

 laborers, too, whose wages had been fifty cents 

 a day, tramped westward along the Indian 

 trails and seized upon scraps of land that lay 

 ownerless. Nine out of ten Americans began 

 to farm with the utmost energy and persever- 

 ance, but with what tools? With the wooden 

 plow, the sickle, the scythe, and the flail, the 

 same rude hand-labor tools that the nations of 

 antiquity had tried to farm with, the tools of 

 failure and slavery and famine. 



Such was the predicament of this republic 

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