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over one hundred thousand inhabitants, and but three others Indianapolis, Peoria, and Quincy having more than twelve thousand. Has it been a benefit to these States, that the cheapness of the public lands has recently borne the tide of emigration onward into Kansas and Nebraska, instead of its being arrested by the left bank of the Mississippi? In our opinion, the interests of these States, and of the emigrants themselves, would be most ef fectually 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.

It is remarked by an intelligent English traveller, 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, 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 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 Kansas or Nebraska, 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. The emigrants of a later day, instead of settling down and completing the half-formed village, 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. In Western 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 to deterioration rather than improvement.

CHAPTER VI.

THE INCREASE OF CAPITAL AS AFFECTED BY THE ADVANTAGES HELL OUT TO THE POSSESSORS OF WEALTH: INJURIOUS EFFECTS Or CASTE, OR THE FIXITY OF RANKS AND CLASSES.

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.

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Necessity is the first and most effective spur to exertion. 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 self-denial 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." "All circumstances, 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

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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 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. The ease with which life is supported fosters indolence, feebleness, gayety, and insouciance; and even when the people pretend to labor, their work is scarcely worth paying for. "In the sugar-mills," we are told, "from twenty to thirty men and women are employed to do what five American operatives would do much better in the same time with the aid of such labor-saving agencies as would suggest themselves at once to an intelligent mind"; and "this is but one of the thousand ways in which labor is squandered on this island." The people might supply themselves with all the luxuries of the earth; but they are content to live in a swinish abundance of the grossest necessaries, to be fat and shining, and to sing, chatter, and bask in the sun.

Again, accumulation is rapid when the rate of profits is large. If this rate is so high that the accumulated savings of a few years may be made to produce an income equal to that from which those savings were made, then the prospect of being released altogether from the necessity of labor will stimulate the habit of frugality to the utmost. The average rate of profits in this country is at least twice as large as in Great Britain; for the interest of money here averages over six per cent, while the English Government funds yield but three per cent, and the ordinary rate for short loans often falls below that point. But the rate of profits on capital considerably exceeds the rate of interest on money; for he who borrows capital undertakes the risk and care of employing it to advantage; and, of course, he who lends his capital, because unwilling to take that risk and care on himself, will not expect so high a rate for it as he might obtain by using it himself. When a great deal can be made by the use of money, a great deal will be given for the use of it; but still not so much but that something shall remain to compensate one for the skill and industry that are required to use it to advantage. The average rate of profits in this country may be estimated at twelve per cent a year, while the corresponding rate in England is but six per cent. In this country, then, by postponing the period of consumption or enjoyment for a little over six years, the amount of that enjoyment may be doubled. In England, in order to double the enjoyment, abstinence must be practised for twelve

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