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a benefit to these States, that the cheapness of the public lands has recently borne the tide of emigration onward into Iowa and Minnesota, instead of arresting it by the left bank of the Mississippi? In our opinion, the interests of these States, and of the emigrants themselves, would be most effectually promoted by raising the price of the public lands to a point which would really keep them out of the market for twenty years to come.

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It is remarked by an intelligent English traveller in the United States, Professor Johnston, that "the wheat-exporting regions of North America have been gradually shifting their locality, and retiring inland and towards the West." During the middle and latter part of the last century, the banks of the Hudson and the Delaware, and the flats of the lower St. Lawrence, were the granary of America; the western part of New York, and especially the Genesee country, succeeded these; then came Ohio and Canada West; and now, a large portion of the surplus wheat, destined for exportation to Europe, is drawn from Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and even Minnesota. The reasons for this change are to be found, partly in the migratory disposition of the people, and partly in their imperfect and exhausting processes of agriculture. The influx of population into the neighborhood causes the lands to rise so rapidly in value, that the deterioration of the soil, under too constant and exhausting crops, becomes comparatively of little moment. Little attention is therefore paid to manuring or to establishing a due rotation of crops. Only the cheapest system of husbandry, and that productive of the quickest returns, without regard to the effects produced by such tillage in the long run upon the inherent fertility of the ground, can enable the farmer to maintain competition in the market with the supplies poured in from the newly opened wheat-regions farther west, where the land has been obtained at a nominal price, and its virgin powers seem inexhaustible. Tired of a contest in which he is subject to a constantly increasing disadvantage, the New York farmer at last sells his farm, and himself migrates westward, secure of obtaining a larger and more fertile tract of land at a low cost. But in Iowa or Wisconsin, he soon finds that he has only bartered one disadvantage for many. The cost of transporting his wheat to market is now

so great, that the price on the ground hardly pays the expenses of cultivation. Labor is dear, and difficult to be had at any price, as few will work for wages, when they can obtain farms for themselves at a nominal price and on long credit. All the evils of a residence on the frontier make themselves felt, and a remedy for them is but slowly introduced, as the means of transportation are improved, and a few of the simpler mechanic arts begin to be practised in the vicinity, and to afford a nucleus for the settlement of a town. The emigrants of a later day come forward, but, instead of settling down and completing the half-formed village, they push on and begin rival settlements farther still in the interior. Then competition begins anew, and the old contest with lessening prices and increasing expenses of cultivation must be renewed. The great evil in the Old World, especially among commercial and manufacturing nations, arises from the undue concentration of the people in cities, the improvements in the implements and processes of agriculture requiring every year a smaller and smaller number of laborers for the tillage of the fields. Here in America, the difficulty is of just the opposite character; the population is thinly dispersed, cities are found only at great distances from each other, and the processes of agriculture, as well as of most of the arts of life, tend rather to deterioration than improvement. As Professor Johnston remarks, "were the population as fond of their homes, and as stationary in numbers, as in the central regions of Northern Europe, -as quiescent in character, their labor as small in money value, and everywhere as abundant, and their institutions as repressive of exuberant energy, this primitive condition of the agricultural practice would be both less felt among themselves, and a matter of less observation to foreign countries."

CHAPTER IX.

THE INCREASE OF CAPITAL AS AFFECTED BY THE ADVANTAGES AND REWARDS WHICH ARE HELD OUT TO THE POSSESSORS OF

WEALTH.

THE next stimulus of labor and frugality which we have to consider is, the prospect that the savings when made, or the capital when accumulated, will be attended with a high rate of profit, and by a large proportion of physical comfort, social consideration, and political influence.

Necessity is the first and most effective spur to exertion. We have wants that must be satisfied; we must eat and drink, or we perish. But observe that labor or exertion tends only to the production of wealth, and that our natural desires urge us to consume the product just as soon as it is created. For the accumulation of capital, or the growth of national opulence, we must be willing not only to work, but to save. Now, the greatest of all encouragements to frugality is the sure prospect that our savings will contribute largely to our comfort, will elevate our position in society, and add to the estimation in which we are held in the community, and to the power which we actually wield. No man will practise selfdenial for nothing; take away the chance of using his accumulations to advantage, and every one, to use the popular phrase, will spend as he goes. It is not enough to prove to the laborer, that what he does not spend to-day he will be able to spend to-morrow. There is some hazard, at least, that he may lose it before the morrow comes; and if an equal amount of enjoyment can be had with it now, he will be apt to secure that enjoyment as soon as possible. But when he sees that the enjoyment, if postponed, may be considerably increased, he will be anxious to save; and this anxiety will be greater in proportion to the probable rate of increase, and to the comforts and immunities which the use of the accumulation may bring. The greater the consideration and influence which attend the possession of wealth, the greater will be the temptation to amass wealth.

What has been called "the effective desire of accumulation," says Mr. Mill, ❝is of unequal strength, not only according to the varieties of individual character, but to the general state of society and civilization. Like all other moral attributes, it is one in which the human race exhibits great differences, conformably to the diversity of its circumstances and the stage of its progress." Again, "in weighing the future against the present, the uncertainty of all things future is a leading element; and that uncertainty is of very different degrees." 66 All circumstances," therefore, as Mr. Rae observes, which increase "the probability of the provision we make for futurity being enjoyed by ourselves or others, tend to give strength to the effective desire of accumulation. Thus, a healthy climate or occupation, by increasing the probability of life, has a tendency to add to this desire. When engaged in safe occupations, and living in healthy countries, men are much more apt to be frugal, than in unhealthy or hazardous occupations, and in climates pernicious to human life. Sailors and soldiers are prodigals. In the West Indies, New Orleans, the East Indies, the expenditure of the inhabitants is profuse. War and pestilence have always waste and luxury among the evils that follow in their train."

Improvidence may also proceed from intellectual as well as moral causes. "Individuals and communities of a very low state of intelligence," says Mr. Mill, "are always improvident. A certain measure of intellectual development seems necessary to enable absent things, and especially things future, to act with any force on the imagination and will. The effect of want of interest in others in diminishing accumulation will be admitted, if we consider how much saving at present takes place, which has for its object the interest of others rather than of ourselves;—the education of children, their advancement in life, the future interests of other personal connections, the desire of promoting, by the bestowal of money or time, objects of public or private usefulness. If mankind generally were in the state of mind to which some approach was seen in the declining period of the Roman empire, caring nothing for their heirs, as well as nothing for their friends, the public, or any object which survived them, they would seldom deny themselves any indulgence for the sake of saving, beyond what was

necessary for their own future years; which they would place in life annuities, or some other form which would make its existence and their lives terminate together."

The various stages of civilization depend upon, or are the consequence of, the varying strength of this desire of accumulation. The remnants of Indian tribes which are found in villages upon the banks of the lower St. Lawrence are surrounded by circumstances which ought to secure to them all the comforts of life, and which would enable others to amass wealth. They have abundance of fertile land, already cleared from the forest, and manure in heaps lies beside their huts. Yet such are their apathy and improvidence that they often suffer extreme want; and from the privations thus endured, with occasional intemperance, their number is rapidly diminishing. Yet their apathy does not arise from aversion to labor; for they are industrious enough when the reward of toil is immediate. They are successful in hunting and fishing, and they work with ardor when employed as boatmen on the St. Lawrence. They will even till the ground, if the returns from such labor are speedy and large; they will raise Indian corn, which grows and ripens quickly in Canada, and yields perhaps a hundred fold. But they have not foresight enough to fence their fields, and hence, when the situation is exposed to the incursions of cattle, the culture is abandoned.

Nearly as low, in respect to foresight and prudence, are the emancipated negroes of Hayti and in the British West Indies. In a tropical climate, where little clothing or shelter is needed, and where the ground is so fertile that the labor of a few weeks will supply sustenance for a year, they are content to gain little more than the necessaries of a merely animal existence. "From five acres of land in Jamaica," says Mr. Bigelow, "a negro will supply almost all his physical wants. I have seen growing on a patch of less than two acres, owned by a negro, the bread-fruit, bananas, yams, oranges, shaddocks, cucumbers, beans, pine-apple, plaintain, and chiramoya, besides many kinds of shrubbery and fruits of secondary value." Yet where nature is thus bountiful, flour is allowed to cost from $16 to $18 a barrel, butter 38 cents a pound, eggs from three to five cents apiece, hams 25 cents a pound, and everything else in proportion. "Four fifths of all the grain con

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