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American Implements, and 
is dangerous to the stability of the empire that we should 
relax our commercial hold on our colonies, and that America 
should take up the threads that we allow to fall from our 
grasp. The danger is at present the more imminent because, 
in consequence of the shortness of two successive harvests in the 
Western States, the flood of emigration thither is dammed up, 
and is fast rising in the Eastern cities. The great New England 
hive of manufacturing industry is swarming with fresh workers, 
and the consequent competition for employment begins to 
threaten us with a keener rivalry than heretofore. The game, 
however, is not yet lost ; cheap capital and concentration of 
labour still incline the balance of advantages in our favour, and 
an intelligent and prudent use of these advantages cannot fail of 
giving the triumph to British industry. In the descriptions that 
follow I have made some use of the catalogues and lists of prices 
of Nourse, Mason, and Co., of Boston ; Allen, of New York ; 
Mayher and Co., all northern houses ; for, be it observed, these 
labour-saving implements are almost confined to the Northern or 
free States, many of them being unknown in the South, where 
manual labour is at command, and where the same difficulties 
are experienced as in England in entrusting machinery to the 
management of uneducated and careless or hostile hands. 
I do not flatter myself that I am about to introduce to the 
British Agricultural interest a set of implements altogether new 
to it — many of them have been already seen in England ; but I 
am certain that the British farmer is not as familiar as he should 
be with the methods by which labour may be saved, and is saved 
elsewhere. Nor, again, do I consider all these implements as 
well adapted to English as they are to American necessities ; but 
those which may be little suited to the highly-finished agricul- 
ture of England are the very things most wanted in the forests 
and new clearings of our colonies, where the conditions of agri- 
culture so closely resemble those of America. Should it be 
said that the prejudices and obstinacy of English labourers would 
oppose insuperable obstacles to the introduction of some of these 
implements, I answer that the proper way of introducing them 
has not yet been tried. It is not surprising that the day-labourer, 
having little inducement but to get through the day's work with 
the least trouble, should prefer an old-fashioned tool to which he 
is accustomed rather than any new-fangled device, which he 
regards with jealousy as likely to interfere with his labour. It 
seems to me that the proper way to overcome these prejudices 
would be for the master to learn well the use of the new imple- 
ment, show the labourer its superior convenience and efficacy, 
and make it his interest to give it a fair trial by lending him it 
at first for piece-work. 
