of labor disputes and strikes. The legislatures are busy enact- 

 ing laws protecting women and children from too long or too 

 early service in the factories. Factories have enabled manu- 

 facturers to produce more goods and a better quality of goods, 

 since the workers specialize in performing one piece of work. 

 The effects of the factory on the rural districts have been: (1) 

 They have decreased the supply of labor. (2) They have taken 

 from the homes much of the labor that was formerly done 

 there, making the home more dependent at the same time that 

 it makes it more comfortable through cheaper factory pro- 

 ducts that make for comfort. (3) The congestion of the popu- 

 lation in the city has given rise to bad moral and social condi- 

 tions which in turn react upon rural districts. (4) There is less 

 education through labor than there Was in the days of home 

 manufacture. 



Slave Labor. Slave labor retarded the development of 

 the South. It was a failure in every respect, for it limited the 

 possibilities of industrial growth and development. Free la- 

 borers avoided the South, where labor was degraded by slav- 

 ery. Agriculture was limited to certain crops which could be 

 raised on plantations by negroes under an overseer. The soil 

 was robbed by constant cropping and nothing was done to re- 

 store its fertility. Indeed with slave labor nothing could be 

 done. Southern wealth expressed itself in land and slaves. 

 There was no hope for the South until labor was free. As 

 Grady, the distinguished Southern orator, has phrased it: 

 "The Old South was founded on slavery and agriculture; the 

 New South on freedom and manufacturing." 



Scientific Farming. Scientific farming received its great- 

 est impetus with the passage of the famous Morrill Land Grant 

 bill by Congress in 1865. Each State was given thirty thou- 

 sand acres of public land for each senator and representative 

 in Congress, to be used to endow a college of agriculture and 

 mechanical arts. Later Congress gave each state $30,000 each 

 year to maintain an experiment station and $50,000 to help 

 support an agricultural college. 



The Department of Agriculture was established as a 

 Bureau in 1862 and created as a Department in 1869. It has 



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