CHAPTER XI.

COMPARISON OF AGRICULTURE AND OTHER INDUSTRIES.

The influence of America has considerably changed the destinics of the world by developing character, by working out high ideals, and by emancipating business from false and restrictive principles. In no particular has it been greater than in its effect on the welfare of agriculture and the agriculturist. The case with which traders and manufacturers could combine led to the first successful efforts of the common peoplethe world's reliance as workers-to resist the despotism of royal and aristocratic power. The result was the commercial Republics of Southern Europe, the Communes of France and the Free Cities of Germany. The increase of wealth among the people and the power it gave soon added another to the ruling class.

But these classes, with the traders and craftsmen added, were still small compared with the masses of the people; the spirit of the aristocratic classes descended among tradesmen and manufacturers, and a small part of them soon learned to monopolize the fruits of other men's labors. As the feudel gentry made and kept the laborers on the lands serfs, so these plebeian. capitalists reduced the operatives, who created their wealth for them, to semi-slavery. It was not till the masses of a nation could, in some way, be made capitalists and permanently independent that the combined oppression of position and wealth could be broken. The industries of Europe commenced a good work but they were unable to complete it; for power in the industrial world tended to concentrate in a few hands. Instead of enlarging popular liberties these few joined with the royal and aristocratic classes to keep the remainder of the people on a common level of helpless servitude. The powerful classes

united to control the fate of the laboring classes and could oblige them to accept the smallest reward for their labor on which they could contrive to live while they themselves appropriated the mass of profit. Republics, Communes and Free Cities, in general, gave up independence, in the course of time, to concentrated authority. It was the aristocracy of commercial wealth that so bravely and successfully resisted the whole power of Spain and established the United Netherlands; but, independence secured, they did not tend toward a true democracy and drifted back to a centralized government. Switzerland maintained an imperfect republic from its citizens being largely agricultural. The lower classes were united with an aristocracy which engrossed a large share of power in the government.

In colonial America most of the inhabitants were agriculturists, and so the citizens of the States have ever continued to be. That this has continued to be so has been chiefly due to the Valley, and the breaking down of class rule in America has hastened, by centuries, the political enfranchisement of the world. The Valley yielded its wealth to the laboring millions. The farmers who fought through the war of the Revolution and framed the institutions of the new nation allowed the widest latitude to acquisition and political influence; so that personal independence, intelligence and wealth, first of all countries, became the inheritance, in the United States, of the producing classes, and, from its larger numbers, of the class engaged in agriculture. The nation grew into greatness and power from free agriculture as a principal base. The significance of the result is illustrated by the recent history of France. Its land laws were changed during its terrible revolution, and its peasants gradually became proprietors. In the course of time prosperity and intelligence spread widely among the people. Its ability to bear reverses, from this fact, has recently been the astonishment of the world, and all its monarchical parties combined could not overthrow a republic

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which sprung up in the crisis of the greatest calamity of its history.

The most hopeful feature of the America of the future is the general tendency of the number of land holdings in the United States to increase. The cases in which large accumulations of land are made by individuals are exceptional. It is, as a rule, the small or moderate sized farms that are most profitable. Too much land is apt to ruin its owner. As in all other things, so in this, the Valley is impartial and promotes general progress. As if by a settled law, it has uniformly discouraged monopolies, nor does there seem to be any reason to suppose there will be a change in any future which can now be foreseen. The South lost its "Cause" for disregarding this principle and allowing its agriculture to favor a kind of monopoly of the soil and its productions by a continually decreasing class-that is relatively decreasing. Natural law has a firm control of the Valley and of the political economy of the nation through it. It demands free labor, declines to encourage a servile class to develop its resources, and, if labor must be hired, requires that it be honest, hearty and interested. These tendencies, founded in the general situation, are far better than agrarian laws and fairly assure the intelligence and independence of all future generations. The farmer leads a life too healthy, makes his gains too naturally, is too self-dependent to become corrupt and the class will, undoubtedly, always be strong enough to control the corruptions of the other classes.

Agriculture has always been the ruling industry in the country by the amount of wealth it produced, and notwithstanding the immense development of other industries, it has ever kept its distance ahead of them. As the summaries of production have been carefully compiled only in later years, the point may be illustrated by studying the data of foreign exports for the last fifty years. Between 1825 and 1830, the annual average of agricultural exports was $50,500,000.

Other exports were inconsiderable and continued to be so even down to the present, never rising much above twenty-five per cent and usually falling much below it. Lately, since mining and manufacturing have developed to unusual proportions, the values they send abroad by many new channels are still less than twenty per cent of the whole. In 1874, agricultural exports were valued at $548,300,000-nearly tenfold the earlier sum. In 1875 it was $478,700,000; yet this smaller sum was equal to four dollars for every acre of land improved in the Valley.

The amount of export per head of the whole population of the United States was $4.20 in 1825, and in 1875 more than double that amount for the vastly-increased population, while the annual average of export from 1870 to 1875 was about $16 per head of all the population of the Valley, or an average of about $70 for each farm in the Valley.

Cotton, though increasing sixfold in amount since 1830, then formed fifty-five per cent of all the exports. In 1874, it was but 39 per cent. The Valley States produce four fifths of all the cotton and more than the amount exported; and, since the agriculture outside the Valley does not supply the population of those regions, we may consider all these exports as being virtually from the Valley.

Agricultural exports to foreign countries have steadily gained on the increase of population in the whole United States by an average per head of about one dollar and twentyfive cents for each ten years since 1825; and we have reason to believe that the increase will be still more rapid in future. The requirements of the populations of Europe beyond their home supplies of food increase year by year. Steam and the telegraph have consolidated the business of the civilized world, and a strong competition requires that, for a complete and permanent success, the great mass of each of the industries shall be carried on chiefly in the region most favorable to it, and where the facilities are so superior that the largest

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quantity may be produced of the best material and at the cheapest rate. As the Valley is the locality where the most important foods can be produced by the largest use of machinery, and in unlimited quantities, it is sure of supplying the increasing demands of the general market.

The proportion of population gathered into cities—and therefore withdrawn in nearly the same ratio from agricultural occupations-has steadily increased, in Europe and in the United States, during the whole course of the present century. In 1800, about one thirtieth of the people of the Republic lived in cities; in 1840, one twelfth; in 1850, one eighth; in 1860, one sixth; and in 1870, more than one fifth. The use of improved agricultural machinery and implements vastly increases the power of production while allowing the proportionate number of producers to diminish.

This tendency has greatly aided to solve the problem of the Western farmer and will continue to do so by the accummulation of a non-agricultural population in it. It is not probable, however, that this state of things will continue when the country and the world have adjusted themselves to the new conditions introduced by steam machinery. They diminish. the comparative numbers required in all the industries and probably a fairly stable equilibrium will soon be reached, and it seems not improbable that reforms in economic and social science will ultimately reduce the unhealthy concentration of hundreds of thousands of people on a few square miles. When the laws of material prosperity are well understood and in full operation there will be abundant opportunity for progress in sanitary science. The agricultural population will then increase.

The product of all the mining industries in 1870 was about $152,600,000, and probably rose later to $200,000,000 or more; while agricultural products reached very near $2,500,000,000 and later, probably, to fully $3,000,000,000. All the mineral treasures, therefore, were but one fifteenth of the