LEGISLATIVE AIDS TO AGRICULTURE. 17 



LEGISLATIVE AIDS TO AGRICULTURE. 



From an Address before the Worcester Agricultural Society. 



BY BENJAMIN F. BUTLER. 



No intelligent mind can have failed to observe the great 

 movements of collision of labor and capital that now agitate 

 every free country. Trades' unions combine the skilled labor of 

 the British empire ; labor unions organize the mechanics of this 

 country ; and strikes, the organized demand of labor for con- 

 cessions from capital, are the exhibitions of the perennial con- 

 test between the two, ever common in almost every department 

 of toil. And it is also to be noted that while, as a rule, hereto- 

 fore, capital has been successful in every one of these contests, 

 it is a remarkable fact that at this juncture the strikes of the 

 artisan and mechanic, after more or less protracted struggle, 

 have won. Another suggestive fact, is that none of these strikes 

 or collisions has yet taken place in farm labor, nor has such la- 

 bor been affected by them, save in degree as the wages of labor 

 more or less skilled have been thereby raised. What is the ex- 

 planation of this, taken in connection with the fact that tilling 

 the land employs rather more than three-fourths of all the able- 

 bodied men of the country ? 



To answer this question will require us to devote a moment 

 to the examination of the causes and objects of these collisions 

 of labor and capital. 



No one can doubt that in all mechanical and manufacturing 

 industries the production, or, more strictly speaking, the capa- 

 bility of production, has increased tenfold within the last fifty 

 years. The application of the steam-engine as a motive power, 

 the improvements in machinery in the production of every man- 

 ufactured necessary and nearly every luxury of life, have so 

 cheapened their cost as to convert many luxuries into necessi- 



