AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 707 



1870, $1,000,000 a day have been spent in railway construction 

 giving employment to labor ; and now in the United States an 

 army of nearly a million men are employed, directly and indi- 

 rectly, in transportation. Again, when Arkwright invented his 

 cotton-spinning machinery in 1760, there were 5200 spinners 

 and 2700 weavers, or 7900 in all; while in 1887 there were 

 320,000, an increase of over 4000 per cent. In 1833 the number 

 employed at spinning, weaving, and calico-printing was 800,000 

 and in 1887, 2,500,000. Notwithstanding the displacement of 

 labor by machinery, the increased demand, owing to reduction 

 in the price and improvement in the quality of the articles man- 

 ufactured under new conditions, has operated not only to prevent 

 any material reduction in the rates of wages or in the number of 

 employees, but even largely to increase both. It is obvious that 

 the industrial opportunities thus thrown open have mainly been 

 such as to stimulate immensely the creation of those new forms 

 of wealth which go to swell the sum total of values in cities. 



Intimately connected with these facts is the difference in the 

 nature of the human wants which the industries of the farm and , 

 of the city supply. Those met by the former are mainly physical, 

 while those supplied by the latter are social. 



" Physical wants . . . cannot be increased in each individual to 

 any considerable extent. The stomach of the savage will con- 

 sume as much as that of the civilized man ; hence the effectual 

 demand, through this class of wants, can only increase in about 

 the same ratio as population. . . . Social wants are essentially 

 different in all of their characteristics. They are the result of 

 social, rather than cosmic, influences. They can be increased in- 

 definitely in each individual, and can consequently be multiplied 

 much faster than the population." 



The influence of labor-saving contrivances in agriculture has 

 consequently tended to eliminate the man from the ' farm. 

 Mr. E. V. Smalley states that " the farmer of our day, with the 

 help of machinery, exerts a productive force equal to that of 

 three men in the days of his grandfather " ; and Mr. Atkinson 

 has estimated that, by the aid of improved means of transporta- 

 tion and specialization of industry, the labor of one man on the 



