IMPROVEMENT IN AGRICULTURE. 
139 
plant; a note at bank matures by falling due; an oat in the 
field matures by falling dew ; but they will be found in most 
cases shorter than wanted, unless the fiscal bank and the bank 
of earth both receive timely deposits. 
The farmers in the early part of the nineteenth century, in 
many places, still used a plow scarcely better in its model, than 
that used by the ancient Romans, and cattle were not unfre- 
quently employed in treading out the grain. 
Small inducement was held out to the skilled mechanic to 
engage as a laborer in agriculture, or anything connected with it. 
Stalwart limbs, and insensible to fatigue, were the chief requi¬ 
sites of a farm laborer, and even these were paid for in the 
usual niggardly way that brute force is only rewarded. Twelve 
dollars a month was given for the services of a farm hand, 
while a good mechanic at any other employment would obtain 
double that sum. A man that has mechanical skill sufficient to 
whittle out an ax-helve, make a wooden linch-pin and turn a 
grind-stone, would do very well for a farm hand, provided he 
was physically endowed with the power to work. Perhaps 
there was no business that required so little exercise of the in¬ 
tellectual faculties, as farming under the old method. Plow 
and sow in the spring, harvest in the summer and autumn, 
about covered the ground of necessary knowledge. 
All these things have undergone a change. The inventive 
genius of mankind has, until the present century, been chiefly 
directed to manufactures and commerce, leaving the kindred 
and more vital employment of agriculture entirely out of view. 
The two women grinding at the mill, have both, been long 
since taken away, and water and steam, with their resistless 
power, made to perform work they might safely defy the united 
muscles of thousands of men to perform. The gossamer tis¬ 
sue of the silk-worm is handled by an iron-fingered engine, with 
all the delicacy of the most sensitive nerves; and the manipu¬ 
lations of all the arts have, by the triumphs of human genius, 
been turned over to the perfect workings of automaton ma¬ 
chines. All this has been going on for centuries, while in ag- 
