CHAPTER XXII. OF VITAL CHANGES IN THE FORMS OF MATTER -CONTINUED. 31. Wealth consists in the power to command the services of nature. Great increase of British wealth, resulting from the command of steam. Extraordinary amount of undeveloped power in the United States. Combination of action required for its development. National policy adverse to association and combination. 2. Waste of power resulting from the exhaustion of the soil, and consequent dispersion of men. Gradual consolidation of the land. 3. Trader's power steadily increases, while that of the farmer and planter as steadily declines. Consequent instability and irregularity of the societary movement. Trader profits by instability. Remarkable steadiness and regularity of the societary movement in all those periods in which the protective policy has been maintained. 1. Growing commerce enables the farmer to pass from the cultivation of the poorer to the richer soils. American policy restricts him to the former. Growing commerce ends to increase the power of labor over capital. American policy gives to capital greater power over labor. Growing commerce tends towards peace, and an economical administration of the affairs of government. American policy looks to extension of the trader's power at the expense of commerce. Increasing tendency towards war and waste. Growing commerce tends towards development of the latent powers of earth and man. American policy tends towards exhaustion of the one and enslavement of the other. 5. Speculative and gambling spirit engendered by a growing dependence upon the trader and transporter. Decline in the feeling of responsibility resulting from irregu larity in the societary movement. Political and judicial corruption resulting from the growth of centralization. 6. The higher the societary organization the more rapid is the movement and the more instant the exhibition of the effects of a sound, or unsound, course of policy. Frequency and rapidity of changes in these United States. 7. Phenomena of declining civilization now (1856) exhibited throughout the Union. 28. Human progress manifests itself in decline in the trader's power, and the attendant creation of a scientific agriculture. Opposite tendency of the American policy, and consequent decline of civilization. 39. As agriculture becomes a science the land becomes more productive, and its products tend to rise in price Consequent double profit to the farmer. As raw materials rise in price finished products fall, with further profit to the farmer. Man and land at one end of the scale of prices, and the most highly finished products at the other. The more rapid the societary circulation, the greater is their tendency towards approximation. Agricultural improvement waits upon, and never precedes, industrial development. 310. As raw materials and finished products approximate in price, commerce grows, with constant increase in the steadiness of the societary movement. As they become more widely separated, trade acquires power, and the movement becomes, from year to year, more fitful and irregular. With the one, the real MAN becomes daily more developed. With the other, man becomes from day to day more thoroughly enslaved. § 1. CIVILIZATION grows with the growth of wealth. Wealth itself consists in the ability to command the always gratuitous services of nature. The power of steam employed in Britain is equal to the united forces of 600,000,000 of men, and yet the number of persons employed in British coal nines but little exceeds 100,000. Her entire population being but little more than 20,000,000, it follows that, were be power equally divided, each individual would have the quivalent of nearly thirty willing slaves, employed in doing his work; slaves, too, requiring neither lodging, food, nor raiment. Such is the wonderful effect of combination in in creasing human force. Of all the communities of the world, no one has within its reach so great an amount of material force as have these United States. Their soil, enriched through ages, is a great reservoir of wealth, requiring for its development only the magic power of ASSOCIATION. Nevertheless, there is in no country so great a voluntary waste of both material and mental force. In Ireland and India, Turkey and Portugal, similar waste takes place, but in none of these is there even a pretence that the people direct their own course of action Here, the reverse is the case, every man being supposed to constitute a part of the government, and to aid in directing its action so as to enable him and his neighbors to profit most by the gifts of Providence; yet here it is that men are most disposed to exhaust the soil and thus compel themselves to fly apart from each other, thereby depriving themselves of the power to substitute the great natural forces for the unaided strength of the human arm. § 2. To enable men to come nearer together the land must have returned to it the refuse of its products. Of all the raw material required for human purposes manure is the most important, and yet of all it is the one that is least susceptible of being carried to a distance. The waste of fertilizing matter in our cities is so great as to be almost beyond calculation. The city of New York and its vicinity, alone, calculated at only two cents a day for each person, and making but a small allowance for the animals, would amount to $10,000,000 per annum. The potash and phosphoric acid contained in the corn and wheat crops of 1850 were estimated at nearly $30,000,000; nearly all of which was lost. Add to this the large export of breadstuffs, of ashes, and of the bones of cattle, and "it would be improper," says a distinguished agriculturist, "to estimate the annual waste of the country at less than an amount equal to the mineral constituents oj 1,500,000,000 bushels of corn!" This was said ten yea since. Such an estimate now made would carry the figure. up to 2,000,000,000 of bushels. Such being the facts, it is no cause for surprise that ever intelligent foreigner is forced to remark on the low conditio of American agriculture generally, and on the steady din inution of the powers of the soil. In New York, the averag product of wheat is but half of what it was estimated at 80 years since. In Ohio it is but eleven bushels to the acre, and in Virginia less than seven. Tobacco has been raised in the Border States until the land has been utterly exhausted; while throughout the cotton growing country there is exhibited a scene of destruction unparalleled in the world to have been accomplished in so brief a period. The people there are living on their capital, selling their soil at prices so low that they do not obtain one dollar for every five destroyed; and hence it has been that the laborer has been becoming more and more enslaved. As the power of the land declines, it becomes more and more consolidated in the lands of large proprietors who grow poorer from year to year. All this, we are sometimes told, is a natural consequence of the fact, that slavery is not adapted to the operations of scientific agriculture; but here, as usual, modern political economy puts effect in the place of cause-the continued existence of slavery being a consequence of the absence of that combination which is needed for the advancement of agriculture. § 3. The trader profits of changes in the prices of his commodities. He desires to buy cheaply and sell dearly; and the more frequent the vicissitudes of trade, the more numerous are his chances for accumulating fortune. The farmer, the planter, and the miner, on the contrary, desire steadiness, needing, as they do, to make their arrangements for years ahead. The cotton mill requires much time for its construction, and for the collection and organization of the people who are therein to work. The preparation of the mine, the furnace, and the rolling-mill, requires long periods of exertion and large expenditure before their owners can begin to reap reward. The trader, on the contrary, buys and sells from hour to hour; and the greater his power to produce changes in the prices of wheat, cloth, and iron, the greater is the probability that he will ultimately enter upon the possession of the land of the farmer, the mill of the cloth manufacturer, the furnace of the maker of railroad bars, or the road of the man who has invested his fortune in a great improvement— and at half the cost at which this machinery has been constructed. Trade and commerce thus look always in opposite directions, the one desiring and producing frequent and rapid changes, the other seeking and promoting regularity of movement. Steadiness is an essential characteristic of civilization; unsteadiness, of barbarism. In savage life there is no stability, man being there the slave of nature. wealth he becomes her master, and society then assumes a regular form, the movements of each day being distinguished from those of the one preceding only by a steady and gentl increase in the rapidity of exchanges. This is advancing civilization. The reverse is seen in all countries of advancing barbarism, crisis following crisis, each more severe than the last, until the societary machine falls to pieces, and chaos once more reigns. Tried by this standard, the American Union tends towards barbarism, the crisis of 1842, which preceded the tariff of that year, having been more fearful tha that of 1821, which prepared the way for the tariff of 1824; and that now (1856) in preparation being likely as far t surpass that of 1842, in severity, as that had exceeded the one by which it had been preceded.* § 4. Commerce enables the farmer to reclaim the rich soils. Growing supremacy of trade drives men to the poorer ones. Commerce tends to elevate the laborer and the small capitalist towards the level of the great one. Growth of power in the trader tends to sink the small capitalist to a level with the day laborer. Commerce gives to the labors of the present increased power over the accumulations of the past. The growing power of trade produces the reverse effect, raising the rate of interest, and destroying the power to obtain reward for labor. Commerce creates local centres, thus relieving the farmer from the tax of transportation, and enabling him to vary his cultivation. Trade, by crushing local centres, compels the farmer to confine himself to those products that will bear transportation to the distant city, while compelling him to constant exhaustion of the soil. Commerce promotes the development of the treasures of the earth, and enables men to live nearer to one another. Growing supremacy of trade travels hand in hand with the increasing dispersion of men. Commerce, making no wars, looks to peace, wealth, and * In a note of Mr. Carey, written in 1858, he here informs his readers, that the above sketch of the movements of the American Union was written in 1856, in the midst of a glare of fancied prosperity, such as never before had been known, and which proved to be but the herald of the terrible crisis of 1857. happiness. Trade, always dispersive and warlike, thirsts for the acquisition of Cuba and Central America, sends fleets to Japan, and fits out filibustering expeditions, thus seeking outlets for population abroad while closing the markets for labor at home. Commerce enriches the people while producing economy in the administration of government. Increase of the trader's power tends to impoverish the people, while enriching those connected with the expenditure of public revenue. Thirty years since, $10,000,000 supplied all the means required. Ten years later, under the system of dispersion and exhaustion, the expenditure was quadrupled. Commerce being reinstated in the direction of affairs, the amount was reduced one-third. Trade, however, again obtaining the direction of affairs, the expenditure grew to $60,000,000. Moving steadily forward in the same false direction, the country has since reached a state of war which makes now (1864) an annual demand for $600,000,000. Commerce diminishes the necessity for the transporter's services, and lessens his power. Trade tends to make of him the master of men who drive the plough and swing the flail. Commerce opens mines and builds furnaces, and thus creates the power to make local roads. Trade destroys the power to support them when they have been made, but it creates great thoroughfares, whose management is so directed as to tax the local commerce for the support of that with distant people. Commerce looks homeward, promoting domestic intercourse by means of the improvement of rivers, the construction of harbors, and the opening of mines. Trade, looking outward, measures the prosperity of a country by the extent of its intercourse with people who are distant, and with whom exchanges can be but few in number. Commerce tends to increase the power of self-government, lessening the dependence on foreign markets, while increasing the power to go to them. Trade increases the necessities of man while diminishing his powers. General comfort, happiness, and prosperity, follow in the train of the one, while poverty and over-population are the invariable attendants of increase in the power of the other. Commerce tends to produce harmony among men. Fiveand-twenty years since, the stranger was always welcomed, but with the abandonment of the protective policy in 1833, |