22 THE WHEAT CIJLTUEIST. 



reflect on the number of persons engaged in the culture 

 of the plant, the number engaged in constructing and 

 improving machinery to gather and prepare the seed, 

 the number engaged in transporting the grain from 

 place to place, as well as the number engaged in the 

 manufacture of flour, and the preparation of bread. 

 Truly is not the wheat the plant, the corner-stone of 

 civilization, and would not the destruction of it over- 

 whelm society with darkness blacker than the storm- 

 cloud at midnight ! Does the extreme cold of winter 

 destroy the germ of the stalk in the plant ? have the 

 rains been too frequent and too abundant, or has a 

 pitiless and heartless hail-storm levelled it to the earth ? 

 Then how many are the thousands to whom is brought 

 suffering and sorrow and hunger ! 



" While the hands of industry are busily employed in 

 securing the product yielded by the wheat plant, every 

 one is eagerly and earnestly shaping his demand for a 

 pro rata of the results. This one has closeted himself, 

 and buried himself in the study of law ; that one has 

 seized the pencil or the chisel ; another has taken to the 

 jack-plane ; a fourth has mounted the fearful locomo- 

 tive ; a fifth has intrusted himself to the treacherous 

 waves of the briny deep ; a sixth has picked up the 

 sledge, whose uses were taught to mankind by Yulcan, 

 and from sun to sun strikes the patient anvil ; all, all 

 having a single and identical object in view, namely, 

 that of exchanging the fruits of their labors for the 

 fruits of the wheat plant. Thus is the action of society 

 kept in a continual round of exchange, like a bark on a 

 sluggish eddy, forever departing from the shore only to 

 be forever arriving at it, and forever arriving only to be 

 forever departing. The pearl-fisher dives fearlessly into 



