Less Foreign Demand Intensifies Home Competition. 57 



tion and power machinery. Looking at this question 

 without any desire to be mathematically accurate, it is 

 fair to say, perhaps, that it would require from fifty to 

 one hundred million persons in this country, working 

 under the old system, to jDroduce the goods made and do 

 the work performed by the workers of to-day with the aid 

 of machinery."^ 



In efficiency of production, where there has been an 

 advance in manufacture of from three to six fold, it is 

 doubtful if the power of agriculture is 50% greater. That 

 is, in the former, two men will now do what fifty years 

 ago would, on the average, have required from six to 

 twelve men; but in agriculture two men now will hardly 

 make good what three performed then. In the harvest- 

 ing of wheat, barley, oats, in the hay field, and in the turn- 

 ing of milk into butter, there has been a large increase of 

 efficiency. These are representatives of a few products 

 where very much more is now accomplished with fewer 

 men. But it takes just as long now to milk cows and per- 

 form most of the chores of a dairv farm. The writer is 

 not aware that there has been much abridgment of labor 

 in the growing of the corn crop (certainly not in the east- 

 ern states) ; or in the production of most vegetables, or 

 of orchard fruits ; or of beef, pork, poultry ; or of eggs ; 

 or, for the last fifty years, of cotton. If the writer is not 

 mistaken, it takes just as long as ever to raise live stock, 

 horses, cattle, sheep, hogs and fowls. In short, if the 

 entire circle of agriculture is included, the scientific 

 advancement and the aid of machinery will be found far 

 less than is popularly supposed. Marked success in a 

 few lines and small gains in many others have been mag- 

 nified as to the grand result. Let those who feel like dis- 



1 '< 



Industrial Revolution of the United States," p. 334. 



