Methods of Economizing Labour. 
Ill 
us in foreign commerce, and have supplanted us in the great 
whale fisheries ; they grow a cotton crop of 3,700,000 bales, 
which goes far towards supplying the wants of the world ; export 
their timber to all countries that need it ; and produce a surplus 
of corn and provisions (in ordinary years) sufficient to glut our 
markets, besides feeding the population of the West Indies, and 
of all the eastern seabord of South America. These are great 
results, and our wonder is heightened when we reflect that they 
have been achieved beneath a climate certainly far less favourable 
to continuous exertion than this of England, with summers the 
exhausting heat of which relaxes and unnerves the physical powers, 
and winters which for months together bind nature in impene- 
trable folds of ice and snow. 
Where shall we seek an explanation of these marvellous results 
where but in the free energies of the vigorous and ambitious 
race of which they form a branch — a race endowed with powers of 
adaptation to circumstances unparalleled in any other people — and 
in the peculiar position of that race in America, planted as it was 
origina'lv on a barren and inhospitable coast, which yielded scanty 
means of subsistence save such as the sea afforded — a condition 
calculated to stimulate and intensify their energies to the utmost, 
and to prepare them for grappling resolutely and perseveringly with 
the obstacles which nature and man opposed to their extension ? 
The strong common sense which is their birthright shows 
itself in a practical habit of thought, which places clearly before 
them the end to be attained, and enables them to adapt their 
means to the attainment of that end. The American, moreover, 
in common with the Englishman, possesses the inventive faculty 
in a high degree ; a faculty which in the former has been quick- 
ened by the spur of necessity, and aided by the general diffusion 
of a solid and practical system of education, comprising instruc- 
tion in the common arts of life and the physical sciences, 
especiall}- mechanics and chemistry. The degree to which 
invention is thus stimulated may be judged from the number of 
patents that issue yearly in America as compared with England 
and France, for the American ones exceed in number the French 
and English together ; and if the useful and practical nature of 
the inventions be made the criterion, the advantage will be found 
to be still more in their favour. 
In comparing the application of this inventive faculty to the 
arts of life in America and in England, one simple fact must 
be taken into accouni, and that is, that whereas in England 
unskilled labour is procurable at a cost of I5. 6rf. or 2^. a day, in 
America the same class of labour is frequently not to be had on 
any terms, and, if available, costs from As. to 5s. : and if out-door 
labour is scarce and dear, in-door " lielp" is still more so, for 
