CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

§ 1. THE closer the approximation of the prices of raw materials and manufactured commodities, the more does society tend to assume its natural form the greater is the tendency to stability and regularity of movement and the more rapid is the advance in civilization, wealth, and power. The more those prices tend to recede from each other, the more does society tend to take the form of an inverted pyramid, the less is the regularity of movement, the greater is the tendency towards barbarism, and more rapid is the decline in wealth and power. In the United States, those prices do recede-more cotton and more flour being at this day required to pay for any given quantity of iron, copper, tin, or lead - the most essential of the commodities required for than was needed for that purpose half a

advance in civilization century since.*

The several metals here referred to are indirectly, though not directly, the produce of wheat and cotton. The value of iron is the measure of the resistance that is to be overcome in obtaining it. That resistance is to be overcome by means of labor, and that labor represents food and clothing. As the natural forces are brought to the aid of man, less labor-i. e. less food and clothing — is required for the extraction of the fuel and the ore, and for their conversion into iron; and the quantity of the latter obtainable in exchange for the raw materials of food and clothing should steadily increase, unless the labor required for the production of corn and wool should diminish in a corresponding ratio. That it does not do so, we know. In the last half century, the natural forces required for the service of the miner and smelter have been, to a far greater extent than those required by the farmer, subjected to the control of man; and yet the men who produce wheat and cotton have been seen (ante, p. 204) to be required to give a constantly increasing quantity of their products in exchange for any given quantity of iron, copper, tin, or lead. They do, it is true, profit by the diminution in the labor required for converting those metals into axes, ploughs, and other instruments; but they lose by the fact that the prices of the metals are sustained, while those of their commodities so steadily decline. The iron producer gains on every hand-by improvements in the machinery by means of which cotton is converted into cloth-by the reduction in the price of the cotton itself by the fact that he is always improving his machinery, and always, therefore, passing from the less productive to the more productive beds of coal and iron. The effect of this is seen in the fact, that while the latter obtain, in exchange for a ton of iron, thrice the quantity of cotton-yarn

The closer that approximation, the greater is everywhere the tendency to increase in the productiveness of the soil-with growing power of association and combination. The more remote those prices from each other, the greater is the tendency towards exhaustion of the soil, with declining power of combination. Throughout this country, the powers of the soil decrease, and thus are we presented with another of the phenomena which everywhere else have attended declining civilization and approaching barbarism.*

The more the soil becomes enriched, the greater is its power of attraction, the more rapid is the growth of commerce, and the more civilizing are the tendencies of the time. The more it is impoverished, the greater is its repulsive power, the slower becomes the growth of commerce, and the more rapid is the decline of civilithat could have been obtained forty years since, the former give thrice the quantity of cotton in exchange for a ton of bars with which to lay their roads. In a former chapter, (vol. i. p. 269,) the quantity of iron obtainable by the Ohio farmer is shown to have increased - a consequence of improvement in the roads by which he goes to market. The offset against this is to be found in the constant exhaustion of the soil; and hence it is that that new State, the creation of little more than half a century, has already become the great emigrating State of the Union. The mowing and reaping machines, and the horse-rake, facilitate the exhaustion of the elements required for the production of wheat and corn; and the railroad facilitates their exportation. Under the existing system, the more numerous those improvements, the greater must be the tendency towards emigration and isolation, and isolation tends towards barbarism.

* The facts presented for consideration in all purely agricultural countries correspond precisely with those observed in the planting States of the American Union. Thus, in Brazil, cultivation commenced in the vicinity of those places in which towns and cities now are found; but as the land became exhausted, the planters gradually receded from them-leaving deserts where they had found the most productive lands. The cost of transportation, therefore, steadily increases; and the more it does increase, the less is the proportion of the labor of the community that can be given to production. As necessarily occurs in all such cases, the thirst for land is great, and properties are very large. Large proprietors - unwilling to give their attention to the production of any thing but their one great staple, coffee - prefer to purchase grain rather than to raise it. Food, therefore, becomes more costly from year to year. A case is stated, of a planter who had made a large crop of coffee, but was unable to send it to market, because he could not purchase the corn required to feed his mules upon the road. The reader who desires to satisfy himself of the entire identity of the system of Brazil and Carolina, and of the destructive effects of an exclusive agriculture, may do so by consulting a recent work on that country by M. Lacerda Warneck, a summary of the contents of which is given in the Journal des Economistes, for July, 1856. The remedy there prescribed for all these difficulties is an improvement in the modes of cultivation, but agriculture is the last of all the sciences to attain development. It follows always in the wake of manufactures; and if Brazil would improve her cultivation, she can do so on no other condition than that of placing the hammer and the loom in the neighborhood of the plough and the harrow.

zation. In this country, as has been shown, the attractive power of the soil diminishes, and men are almost everywhere flying from each other as if from pestilence-the enormous emigrations of the barbarous ages of Europe being here reproduced, and affording conclusive evidence of decline in civilization, wealth, strength, and power. What are the lesser phenomena by which decay is manifested, and how they influence the various portions of society, we may now inquire.

At the return of peace in 1815, land was high in price — a market having been already made at home for the most important. of its products. Protection being discontinued, that market disappeared, and the result was seen, six years later, in the almost universal ruin of the farmers-judgments being everywhere entered up-mortgages being foreclosed-sheriffs' sales abounding to such extent as at length to force the people of the agricultural States to the adoption of laws staying the execution of the judgments of their courts—and land falling to a fourth of the price at which it had sold but seven years before. The sales of public land, and the revenue therefrom, had trebled in the period from 1814 to 1818-19 thus increasing the number of farmers at the moment when the market for their products was gradually disappearingand thus preparing the way for that decline in the price of the products of the farm whose steady progress is exhibited in the figures already laid before the reader.

By 1824, the land revenue had fallen to less than a third of the amount at which it had stood in 1819. Thenceforward-protection having been re-established—it went gently up, until in 1832 and 1833 it averaged $3,295,000— being almost precisely the amount it had so suddenly attained thirteen years before. In the mean time, the population had increased about two-thirds; and so regular had been the increase in the home demand for food, that now, for the first time in the country's history, its price was wholly uninfluenced by the fall of foreign markets. From 1828 to 1831, the price of wheat in England had been high-averaging £3 48. 3d. per quarter, or $1.72 per bushel. From that period, it fell regularly, until, four years later, it was but £1 19s. 4d., or $1.05 per bushel; and yet the price of flour in the American ports remained entirely unaffected; as is shown by the following figures, derived from the recent Treasury Report :

The Compromise tariff had now, however, begun to operate. Mills ceased to be built, and importations rapidly increased. The mechanic arts no longer affording an outlet for the growing population, emigration to the West grew rapidly, accompanied by enormous speculation in the public lands the speculator always desiring to go in advance of the poor settler, and to profit at his expense. The land revenue rose from $4,000,000 to $14,000,000 and $24,000,000, after which, for four succeeding years, it averaged $5,000,000; and thus in six years was more land disposed of, than had been sold in the forty preceding ones. The consequences were such as might have been expected. While the new farms were being created by help of labor diverted from the old ones, food was scarce and high; but by the time they were ready to supply the market, their owners found that commerce had disappeared. Land again fell in price, and mortgages were foreclosed; and once again were tens of thousands of farmers turned adrift upon the world to recommence their labors as they might. We have here the second great stage of preparation for the extraordinary fall in the price of food that has been exhibited.

The land revenue now (1842) fell to little more than a single million, from which point, under the protective tariff of that year, it rose gradually until, five years later, it had again reached $3,000,000. Soon after, the discovery of the treasures of California came in to make demand for manufactures and give activity to commerce; and so long as that activity continued, the sales of public lands continued small, but now-the building of mills and furnaces having ceased-the revenue from that source, in the last two years, has attained an average of $10,000,000. If to this be added the sales of land granted to railroad companies, we obtain a total for those years of at least $50,000,000, or twice the amount of the twelve years from 1840 to 1852. These sales are an index to the exhaustion of the land, the dispersion of the people, the decline of commerce, and the growth of the power of trade; and as those of 1818 were followed by the agricultural ruin of 1821, and those of 1836 by the ruin of 1841, so must those of 1854-56 be followed by similar effects at a period that is but

little distant. In 1852, flour was lower than it had ever been; but unless counteracted by the increasing supplies of gold, and by the diminished competition of Continental Europe, now so busily engaged in creating a domestic market for food-a fall to a point. still lower is yet to be witnessed. How far this view is correct, the reader will judge for himself after studying the following diagram, and marking that the lowest prices have always followed almost immediately after the highest ones; and marking, too, that these extraordinary changes have, invariably, been the attendants of the system that looked to depriving the farmer of protection, and thus maintaining, even where not increasing, the tax of transportation: