MAN AND NATURE 



But here again we verge upon the dangerous field of 

 prophecy. Let us turn from it and cast an eye back 

 across the most wonderful of centuries, contrasting 

 the conditions of to-day in each of a half-dozen fields of 

 the world's work, with the conditions that obtained 

 at the close of the eighteenth century. Such a brief 

 survey will show us perhaps more vividly than we 

 could otherwise be shown, how vast has been the 

 progress, how marvelous the development of civili- 

 zation, in the short decades that have elapsed since 

 the coming of the Age of Steam. 



Let us pay heed first to the world of the agriculturist. 

 Could we turn back to the days of our grandparents, 

 we should find farming a very different employment 

 from what it is to-day. For the most part the farmer 

 operated but a few small fields; if he had thirty or forty 

 acres of ploughed land, he found ample employment 

 for his capacities. He ploughed his fields with the 

 aid of either a yoke of oxen or a team of horses; he 

 sowed his grain by hand; he cultivated his corn with 

 a hoe; he reaped his oats and wheat with a cradle 

 a device but one step removed from a sickle ; he threshed 

 his grain with a flail; he ground such portion of it as 

 he needed for his own use with the aid of water power 

 at a neighboring mill; and such portion of it as he sold 

 was transported to market, be it far or near, in wagons 

 that compassed twenty or thirty miles a day at best. 

 As regards live stock, each farmer raised a few cattle, 

 sheep, and hogs, and butchered them to supply his 

 own needs, selling the residue to a local dealer who 

 supplied the non-agricultural portion of the neigh- 



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