larger routes of travel, on which it superseded the horse, it greatly multiplied the number of shorter routes on which horses are still necessary. But Mr. Moody is of the opinion* that should steam be successfully applied to common roads, and streets, and general farm work, it may yet supersede the horse instead of increasing the demand for him. The first patent issued in the United States after the organization of the patent office was in June 1797, to Charles Newbold, of Burlington, New Jersey, for a cast-iron plow which combined the mold-board share and land-side all in one casting. During the early part of the present century, however, the plow most in use was of wood, iron-shod, large, ill-shaped and cumbersome, drawn by from one to six yoke of oxen, requiring one and often two men at the handles, another to ride on the beam to keep it in the ground, another to keep it clear, and several drivers for the oxen, often four and six, but never less than two, to turn one acre a day.† Successive improvements in the cast-iron plow were made in 1810 by Josiah Ducher, of New York, in 1814 by Jethro Wood, of Scipio, New York, and in 1836 the implement was brought to a degree of perfection by Joel Nourse, of Worcester, Massachusetts. One man with a single horse will now plow two and a half acres in light soils, and with two horses, by means of the sulky attachment, will ride while driving, breaking two-and-a-half acres of prairie per day. With a gang plow one man and two horses will plow five acres a day, a saving as compared with our first example of ten men plowing one acre, amounting to forty-nine men out of fifty required to do the same work. One man, with a cultivator and a pair of horses, works one acre of corn per hour, whereas he would formerly, with a hoe, work half an acre in a long and hard day, thus saving the labor of nineteen-twentieths of the men formerly required to cultivate corn. The first American patent for harvesting grain issued in May 1803, to French and Hawkins, of New Jersey, was followed by mowers, cutters and threshers in endless number. In 1828, Samuel Lane, of Hallowell, Maine, patented a machine for cutting, gathering and threshing grain in one operation. The Hussey Machine, in 1833, cut as fast as eight men could bind. In 1834, Cyrus H. McCormick, of Virginia, patented his first reaper for cutting grain of all kinds. In 1836, Moore & Haskell provided *"Land and Labor," by Wm. Godwin Moody, p. 17. + ibid. p. 20. FARMING BY MACHINERY. 265 one which would cut, thresh and winnow the grain at once. In 1860 one man with four horses would cut twenty acres a day. Now machines are used whereby one man and team, travelling three miles per hour, will cut eighty acres in ten hours, or as much as could be done by 320 men with sickles. Formerly threshing out a few hundred bushels of grain, with a flail, would fill up a farmer's leisure days throughout the winter. Now the steam thresher threshes, winnows and sacks the grain as fast as twelve or fifteen men can feed the machines and clear away the strawturning out 1,000 to 1,500 bushels a day. In California, machines are used which find the grain standing, and leave it in sacks, combining the cutting, threshing and winnowing in one operation, and putting it in sacks in another. Formerly men took the ripened ear of Indian corn from the stalk by hand and husked. Now a machine drawn by two horses picks off the ear, gathering all the ears whether the stalks stand up or are bent down, husks as fast as eight men, leaves all the husks on the stalk, and does not pull up or cut up or break down the stalks. Forty years ago, by scraping an ear of Indian corn across the end of a shovel, on which the worker was sitting, he would shell from five to twenty bushels a day. Now two men, with a cornsheller, shell twentyfour bushels an hour, or with the three classes of horse-power shellers, four men will shell 1,500, 2,000 and 3,000 bushels per day respectively; one man doing the work of 75, 100 or 150 men. Formerly the farmer paid a toll of an eighth or a tenth to get his grain ground. Now the mills run so automatically, that little more than a watcher at night with his lantern is needed, and the cost per bushel is hardly appreciable. 104. Effects of Releasing Labor by Machinery.-A vast force of persons are thus released from the labor of producing food, for one is enabled to produce as much as scores can consume. Some persons see, in these facts, a reason for alleged stagnations in industry and increased difficulty in obtaining employment.* But before rushing passionately to such a conclusion, there should be a very careful analysis of the fact that formerly nearly every person's occupation had to do almost directly with the visible creation of food, clothing or shelter. Now vast numbers of industries, employing millions of persons in all, are not directly, and many are not even indirectly, connected with either of these. In the United States half a million persons are creating transporta * Moody on "Land and Labor," p. 30. tion by railway, an employment which sixty years ago did not exist. A vast number more are creating intelligence through books and newspapers, a large daily newspaper involving each day some part of the time of 1,000 persons. Hardly did such an occupation then exist. Others by thousands are creating pianos, organs and other musical instruments, an occupation which did not then exist. Others are making works of art, especially photographs, electrotypes, chromos and cartoons-furnishing people with insurance against every known calamity, and indemnifying widows and orphans against pecuniary loss by the death of those on whom they are dependent. Others are transmitting intelligence by electricity, tending power looms, constructing public parks, making matches, India-rubber articles, gutta percha, celluloid, and a thousand things then unknown, from materials not then discovered. Others are obtaining petroleum and refining it, or collecting and transmitting instantaneously to Washington the data from which the weather bureau determines what the weather will be, forty-eight hours ahead, in all parts of the country. With such a vast and complicated army of new employments, and with the visible spectacle before us hourly of almost our entire population, young and old, poor and rich, able and infirm, working steadily all the time, and at least as industriously as before these labor-saving appliances were introduced, it would be a rash generalization to say that the means of employment had in any degree lessened. In fact it accords far more consistently with the incessant industry we continue to see among all classes and conditions of men, to revert to the well-known law, heretofore referred to, that the satisfaction of a lower want only begets the desire for not merely one, but for many, higher wants. If the wants of mankind multiply in geometrical ratio, in proportion as they are satisfied in arithmetical ratio, if as our wants are met, our ambitions expand, how is it possible to base a theory of the suspension of employment, for any human being, on an increase, however great, in the multiplication of the means of satisfaction? It is supposed that the quantity of sewing, which ladies now put upon their gowns and other apparel, has been multiplied in a degree fully equal to the increased economy with which the same amount of sewing can now be done by the machine. Meanwhile, however, millions of persons have found employment in the new industries connected with the manufacture and trade in sewing machines. So, relatively to the absence of all means of transpor tation formerly existing, the manufacture of iron and steel for railways, of cars and locomotives, is a new industry. So the vast increase in the quantities of paper, furs, silks, plate glass, watches, jewelry, bijouterie, books, furniture, capacious residences, oil paintings and higher engravings, standard libraries, and the like, involve an immeasurable increase in the need for human labor. Moreover they minister to enjoyments of a kind to which few could then aspire, but which are now open to the millions without reserve. By reason of the cheapness, with which this extensive introduction of machinery has enabled American farmers to produce agricultural products, the sophistry is sometimes indulged in, by politicians, that dear human labor can underwork cheap human labor. American agricultural products, in the production of which dear human labor participates, do undersell European agricultural products, which are almost wholly produced by cheap human labor, unaided by machinery. In many parts of Europe, and even in parts of Great Britain, wheat is still planted by hand-sowing and reaped with a sickle. This competition is not however between dear and cheap human labor, but between human labor kept dear by the utilization of machinery, or perhaps between machinery itself, and cheap labor. 105. Tenant Farms and Large Holdings in America. -The census of 1880 showed that of a total of 4,008,907 farms in the United States, 1,024,701, or more than one in four, were tenant farms. Estimating the number to have increased with the subsequent growth of population to one and one-quarter millions, it far outnumbers the total number of holdings in Great Britain and Ireland, which now amount to 1,069,827. From 1870 to 1880 also the number of farms containing over 500 and less than 1,000 acres grew from 15,873 to 75,972, and the number containing more than 1,000 acres rose from 3,720 to 28,578. Simultaneously with this tendency toward large farming, and as a part of it, there has been an application of very large capitals to farming, not merely in the purchase of agricultural implements adapted to extensive tillage, but in a general elevation of the breeds of sheep, horses, and cows by the substitution of the best English blooded stock for the mongrel breeds. The tendency during this decade was to make blooded stocks very general, whereas, previously, they had been the hobby of a few only of the more aristocratic farmers, who were looked upon as farming more for taste and |