A COMMERCIAL POINT OF VIEW. 41 



old thing is the best after all ; and yet these very persons 

 are a living evidence against their assertions. True they 

 will never be found among the pioneers of progress, 

 which, if their shallow minds could possibly arrest or 

 hinder, they would too gladly do ; but they can no more 

 help themselves being dragged in the wake of progress 

 than they can stop the revolutions of our earth or the 

 tides of the sea. From such persons we should never 

 have had steam-power, railways, telegraphs, machinery, 

 &c., to economize and multiply labor, to annihilate space 

 and time ; and yet these persons share in the benefit 

 such improvements have created with the greatest com- 

 posure, taking them as fails accomplis, never giving a 

 moment's thought that but a short time ago they were 

 what they choose to call new-fangled things ; they forget 

 that the very clothes they wear, the food they eat, and the 

 beverages they drink are mostly obtained in their superior 

 and cheap form by artificial means ; that, in fact, chemi- 

 cal and mechanical results are combinations of artificial 

 means. For the raw materials we must, of course, de- 

 pend on Nature ; but even those we can in some measure 

 improve by art. 



Therefore, when I speak of breeding poultry by arti- 

 ficial means, I do not wish to convey that eggs (the raw 

 material) can be produced without a hen ; but, when we 

 have eggs, to produce chickens, and from chickens fowls, 

 by a wise appliance of such laws and combinations as 

 science teaches us, as superior to brute care as much as 

 artificial labor by machinery is superior to manual labor, 

 as hot-house-grown fruits and flowers excel those grown 

 in the open air, and as stall-fed cattle are superior to those 

 from the pasturage. 



