WASTE OF LABOR. 



131 



" Certainly," says Mr. Anderson, " their (the Americans) 

 superiority over us is not to be found either in their soil or 

 climate, but in their more laboriously and more skilfully 

 directed industry, aided by implements husbandry. If an 

 acre is to be planted in corn or potatoes, the usual course 

 for a Jamaica farmer is to send twelve or fifteen laborers 

 with their hoes, and probably at the end of the day the 

 ground may have been turned up. And then follows the 

 planting, which is done slowly by the hand, and the 

 making of the drills, and subsequently the cleaning and 

 moulding are all accomplished by the tedious and primi- 

 tive process of hand-hoeing. 



" But in America how is it ? A single man, with his 

 little one-horse plough, is sent to the field alone, and in a 

 day he does the work of fifteen of ours. Then the har- 

 rowing follows with equal speed, facility and economy of 

 labor ; and sowing by a machine which does by an almost 

 simultaneous operation the three-fold work of making a 

 drill, dropping the seed at equal distances, and covering it 

 up — all as quickly as a horse can walk from end to end of 

 the field. As fast as he walks this three-fold work is done 

 by a self-acting machine, which only requires to be dragged 

 over the ground to put the whole of its powers into effec- 

 tive operation. What wonder then at the cheapness of 

 their corn and pork, and the impossibility of our com- 

 peting with them in these articles so long as we continue in 

 our old ways. We all suffer because, in truth, our neg- 

 lected rural population is willing to remain a century be- 

 hind the rest of the world, wedded to their old customs 

 and modes of working — self-satisfied and deficient in enter 



