122 



invented, are constrained to labor at a very low price. 

 With us lands are comparatively cheap, and are mostly 

 cultivated by animal labor. The cattle which roarn on 

 our boundless prairies and pastures, and on the innu- 

 merable hills, afford us aids which will enable us to 

 compete with any nation on earth in every production 

 of field cultivation. 



Our prairies and plains are now mown not unfre- 

 quently by revolving scythes attached to a horizontal 

 wheel, or by scythes having a lateral movement, and 

 moved forward by the power of horses, and a horse rake 

 collects the winrow. Our fields of wheat are not unu- 

 sually reaped by machines propelled by horses, and 

 afterwards threshed by the same power. 



The exhaustless treasures of the forest and of mineral 

 coal, offer resources unk'nown. The innumerable rivers 

 and rapid streams afford us perpetual and immeasurable 

 resources of labor saving power. 



In China and in India, where the price of labor is 

 exceedingly low, their looms are moved exclusively by 

 muscular power and human strength; it is much the 

 same in Italy. Yet however low the price of wages in 

 those countries, the poor weavers of China, and of 

 India, can never compete with our power looms for cot- 

 ton and for silk, by which common cotton is now wove 

 for less than a cent a yard. Even a poor and precarious 

 subsistence alone they could never obtain, in the despe- 

 rate conflict with our engines, moved as they are by the 

 resistless powers of water and of fire. 



In France, the wood growers, and the mines of iron, 

 and iron works, are protected by laws. These are 

 generally the property of the rich. Of a population of 

 32,000,000, but 170,000, or about the proportion of 1 in 

 200 are allowed to vote. These are the rich, and, as 

 might be expected, the poor are oppressed by dreadfully 

 disproportionate taxes. At Lyons, the taxes for town 

 dues of the laborers are heavy, amounting to fifty-four 

 francs per annum in 1835, from their scanty earnings, 



