1846.] European Agriculture. 239 



must be, otherwise they could not manage an estate which calls 

 for heavy expenditures. It seems that the amount of capital re- 

 quired for managing an estate, is double or treble the amount of 

 rent; which cannot be set down at much less than $50 per acre. 

 In respect to capital, then, there is a wide difference between an 

 English and American fanner. Two hands and a w^illing soul, 

 as our friend of the Genesee Farmer w^ould say, is all the capital 

 which is really required on this side the Atlantic to plow or graze 

 a farm. But with this small American capital, the farmer is 

 unable to wait for a market, and hence sometimes labors under 

 the disadvantages of strong and imperious necessity. 



3. Agricultural laborers — We have said that this division of 

 men in agriculture is much like a cast; for it appears that the 

 lines of demarkation between them are strictly drau^n — the indi- 

 vidual moves in his own orbit, in which birth and education has 

 cast him. 



The agricultural laborer, unlike the American, is in a low con- 

 dition; the greatest hardships they suffer seems to be in want- 

 ing food. His outward man is better off than the inward, 

 especially the stomach. Here, then, is a class whose great busi- 

 ness must be to scrape up enough to satisfy the cravings of appe- 

 tite; for the expectations of competency, can scarcely ever cheer 

 the vision of the poor laborer; if it does, it is a dream w^hen the 

 man slumbers, for in his w^akeful moments the barrier is seen to 

 be too high to be scaled, the chains too strongly riveted to be 

 cast off'. 



Another feature in the condition of the laborer, is the division 

 of labor. A plowman is always a plowman, a ditcher is but a 

 ditcher, and a shepherd tends his flocks only, and neither plows 

 nor ditches. The effect is self-evident, the business is mechani- 

 cally well done, and the landlords and tenants reap the benefit, 

 while the individual from his limited capacity is bound forever to 

 move in the little orbit in which he was originally cast. But 

 after all these are drawbacks; although mechanical excellence may 

 be secured, he becomes a plodder, slow in his movements, with a 

 stiff gait and a laborious movement of his nether extremities. 



