article, and a greater demand thus created, its value may remain much the same, or the fall in its value may be much less than the increase. Thus between 1492 and 1792 the supply of Gold and Silver coin in Europe increased thirtyfold by importation from America. Their value, however, fell not to one-thirtieth, but to one-twelfth of what it had been before America was discovered. In this connection it and Silver are not

is necessary to remember that Gold metals whose value remains fixed. They are called the precious metals because they are the rarest for which men have much use, and are therefore the most valuable that are largely used. Their value varies from time to time with the demand for them, and with the supply, just as does the value of iron or of wheat.

12. As nearly everything we have a use for keeps falling in value, through our devising better ways of getting it, or finding new supplies of it, the price we pay for articles is not always what it costs to produce them. If we can reproduce or replace them with less outlay of labor than when they were made, we will not pay more for them than they would now cost. Thus a house that has stood for a century is not worth what it cost to build it. All the materials of which it is made had to be hauled to the site by horses or oxen. The bricks in the walls were made by hand. The timber was cut into boards in a saw-pit, one man pulling the saw up through the log, another down. The boards were planed by hand. The glass was made by a laborious method. All these things are done more cheaply now, mostly by machinery and steam-power. So we are willing to pay for such a house only what it would require to build another house like it, using modern tools, machinery and the like.

13. The price of anything, therefore, is not the cost of making it, but the cost of replacing it, or making another

like it. In some cases, as of articles recently made, the two costs are the same. In the case of the bulk of the wealth of a country the two are not the same. The present price of a State like Pennsylvania, for instance, is not equal to the amount of labor expended in clearing, fencing and draining the fields, making the roads, streets and railroads, building the houses, bridging the rivers, sinking the wells, digging the mines, tunnelling the mountains, and so forth. It is only the cost of the labor needed to have taken Pennsylvania as William Penn found it, and to make it what it is by means of modern machinery, tools and appliances of all sorts. Even if we deduct all the labor whose results have been consumed, we shall find that Pennsylvania cost a great deal more than it could be sold

for.

14. With the progress of intelligence, and the growth of numbers, man acquires the power over nature we call wealth, while the values of the things we desire fall. Mankind passes through savagery and barbarism to civilization, through increase of numbers and of industrial association, which this makes possible. The more people in a country, the larger should be the share of necessaries which falls to each. Men pass from worse to better in land, labor and food.

CHAPTER III.

Land and Farming.

I. WE have seen that man passes through three stages in the use of land. He is first a hunter, then a shepherd, then a farmer. In each new stage he needs less land, and gets more out of it, than in the preceding. This lessening of the area he needs, and increase of food and clothing obtained, does not stop with his entrance upon farming. As he acquires more power through the increase of numbers and of intelligence, and through the association with his fellows thus made possible, he narrows still further the area of land he tills, and yet increases his crops.

2. Early farming is confined to the poorer soils, which are dry, thin and easily tilled. They need no drainage, and can be ploughed with a roughly shaped log, and harrowed with a bush. The crop will be a scanty one, perhaps seven or eight bushels of wheat to the acre; but that is the best that is possible to a farming which is weak in its power to conquer nature.

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Later farming comes down from the dry hilltops to the richer valleys below them. It finds in the creek and river bottoms" the elements of fertility, which the circulation of water has carried down from the higher lands. It applies drainage to their wetter soils, and gets a far larger return for the labor expended.

It is a mistake therefore to assume that those who first settle a country will bring the best lands under tillage. We might as well assume that they will burn coal rather than wood, or travel by rail rather than on horseback. They

take the best they can make use of, and men pass from

what is worse to what is better in the use of land.

3. Early farming is extensive. It spends a small capital on a great acreage of soil, and gets a small return. Thus in the Middle Ages, when England had a population of about two millions and a half, there was a great acreage of wheat sown, so that the people of the towns had to turn out to help to reap it. Also the students of the Universities, who were counted by tens of thousands at that time, had to go home to help. This is the origin of the summer vacation of schools and universities. The crop averaged about seven or eight bushels to the acre, and the whole food-supply was what we now would think enough for a million and a half of people. The yield of wheat in England is now more than thirty bushels an acre, and some of her farmers have raised sixty.

4. Later farming is intensive. It spends a large capital on a small acreage. As some one says, it leaves off thinking of the soil as a quarry, and begins to think of it as a piece of scientific apparatus. Instead of letting the land lie fallow one year in three, that nature may restore it after exhaustion, it supplies each year by manures what the last crop has taken. For this purpose it maintains a great stock of cattle, and takes from the barnyard what enriches the fields. It keeps these cattle under cover in winter, and thus saves the food which would be needed to keep them warm, and prevents their degenerating through exposure. It establishes a rotation of crops, and thus avoids drawing from the soil the same material every year. It keeps the wetter soils warm by drainage, and thus increases the crops. It uses tools and implements constructed on the strictest scientific principles, and thus saves the labor of men, and uses the toil of horses and oxen to the best advantage.

5. Early farming was poor because the land was held in common ownership by a large group of persons. Frequently no one was sure of having the same piece of land year after year, and therefore he had no motive to make permanent improvements. In all cases the tiled land became grazing land after a certain date in the autumn, and each farmer must have his work done by that day. Every year a third lay fallow and was grazed, in England and on the continent of Europe, whether the owner of each plot wished it or not. The methods of tillage were traditional, and much of the work was done in common, so that no improvements could be made until they were approved by the whole community. Little change for the better was possible until this common ownership was broken up.

Later farming gives room for each man to do his best with the land he has, whether he owns it or has leased it. It leaves him free to try which is the best time to sow and to reap, the best way to dig or plow and to reap, the best seeds or roots for each kind of soil. It throws him upon his own judgment, instead of subjecting him to the opinion of a community of men. It thus develops his manhood while making the best of the soil.

6. Farming is better done, as a rule, by men who own the soil than by those who have only leased it. A very lazy man, it is true, will work harder if he has to earn his rent than if he had only to get his living out of the soil. But the average farmer needs no such spur to industry; and it contributes to the Nation's welfare to have land owned by those who till it. Farmers who own their land are indisposed to favor violent changes in the State. They support its institutions or its interests against revolutionists and anarchists of all kinds. They have at stake their property in the land. They are rooted in the soil, and therefore conservative. For this reason all the ancient codes of law