increasing proportion of the population elsewhere is thus relieved from arduous drudgery and is enabled to spend more time and work on the comforts and luxuries of life, and in more varied occupations. Machinery not only aggregates people in manufactories of fabrics, and also in districts devoted to wheat and to grazing, but it segregates as well, by enabling great numbers of men to do other work, requiring manual dexterity rather than machinery, for which there would otherwise be no time or opportunity, and which may be carried on wherever men choose to live in communities of moderate size. The application of machinery to the staple products of maize and wheat is producing the same result-less human labor and more food to be consumed. In this essay maize and pork may be considered synonymous terms, the "hog-products" being the conversion of maize into meat. The secret of these changes in the sources of our agricultural supplies is that the railroad has eliminated distance. A barrel of flour, and a barrel of pork or its equivalent, constitute the substance of Western farm products needed by each adult in the East. The two barrels are equal to 500 lbs., or a quarter of the net ton in which our railway traffic is computed. This quantity is now brought from Chicago to Boston, one thousand miles, at an average of $11-sometimes for less-or at the rate of $5, or £1 sterling, per ton of 2000 lbs. We might therefore state an economic equation in these terms: The movement of one year's subsistence of grain and meat for an adult working-man a distance of one thousand miles is equal to $1.25, or 58., which sum is equal to one day's wages of a common workman, or half the daily wages of a good carpenter or mason. Half of one day's wages, one thousand miles, and the movement of one year's subsistence, are synonymous terms. One day's pay places the mechanic of Massachusetts next door to the Western prairies a thousand miles away. The same terms of the equation may soon be applied to the distances beyond Chicago, toward Minnesota, Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska, because grades are easier, fuel is more abundant, and, as population and traffic increase, two days' work of a common laborer in Massachusetts will soon move a year's subsistence of corn and meat fifteen hundred or two thousand miles from far Dakota and from the plains of Nebraska; oue name still designating a Territory, the other the last but one among the States admitted to the Union. At the present time the rates of freight west of Chicago are much higher than between Chicago and the seaboardwa In Dakota, on the Red River of the North, wheat is manufactured in some fields, where each single furrow of the plough is said to take a day to run without once turning; and from these fields the wheat is now brought in millions of bushels, upon which there has been no manual labor, except to direct the machinery, from the time the seed was planted in the field until the bread is cut upon the table of the factory operative in Lowell. As Daniel Webster once replied to the objection made to the importation of the product of pauper labor from abroad, “We cannot afford to do for ourselves what foreign paupers can do so well for us," so we may now say in the East, that we cannot afford to work with our hands on crops which Western farm-machinery can produce so cheaply for us. This mechanism can only be applied with economy on a large scale, and where the soil is in a very comminuted condition, free from loose stones, boulders, ledges, or stumps of trees. Such is the character of the prairie soil-in fact, of the arable land extending east and west from Ceutral Ohio to Colorado, and north and south from Manitoba to Mississippi; this whole valley of the Mississippi and its tributaries now being assigned by some geologists to the loess formation. Such having been the changes that the railroad has worked in the East in enabling us to spare our labor from that which used to be our most arduous work, and apply it to occupations which give us more comfort, more wealth, and more prosperity; and since the railroad can be worked profitably at much less than one cent, or a halfpenny a ton per mile, and on these bulky products of corn and meat at half a cent, or oue farthing, per ton per mile-it may now be asked, what is to be the permanent effect of the steam ship in enlarging the area of cheap transportation on the English production of corn and meat? In California the rains last only four months; in that State and in Colorado, by irrigation, crops of wheat are made exceeding the average English product per acre. Elsewhere our average crop per acre may not be over one half or three fifths; but the area on which this production is possible is subject to no limit for many generations. An American observer may not pronounce dogmatically upon the possible effect of the competition between those lands and the wheat fields of Great Britain. But it may be asked, Can any sys tem of high farming under restrictions compete with these conditions? Can any land, subject to any rent whatever, compete in the production of wheat and meat with these conditions of unlimited areas of land at a cost of $2 to $3, or 88. to 128., an acre, and rates of transportation at half a cent a ton, or one farthing per ton, per mile of rail, when the steamship continues the transportation at a less and less charge as improvements continue to be made in the construction and running of the ships? Can any rented land, subject as it must be to special conditions in the leases as to the rotation of crops, the amount of stock to be kept, and other restrictions necessary to maintain it in condition, compete with these vast areas free from all restriction? As time goes on, must not English farming adjust itself in the same manner that Eastern farming has adjusted itself to these new conditions?--that is, to the variety of products that will not bear long carriage, and that require more and more the individual ownership of small farms, free from onerous rents, and from the more obnoxious conditions of leases and settlements. May not these conditions tend in the long run, and after the settlement of the temporary difficulties of land-tenure now pressing upon Great Britain, as they have here, to greater general prosperity and abundance, and to far greater variety of food at less and less cost to the consumer? Such having been the results without question in the United States, especially in respect to the changes in the older sections of the East, must not the same causes inevitably work the same results across the sea? If these points are well taken, we may now be witnessing not the decadence of the agriculture of Great Britain, but the very beginning of its true progress, and the opening of an upward movement among the agricultural population to greater welfare and prosperity. If the competition of Western grain and meat renders the present system of leasing and working land in Great Britain absolutely and permanently unprofitable, and that system cannot be applied to the greater variety of methods of cultivation and of crops that have succeeded wheat culture in the East, then the interest of both landowner and tenant will coincide in making the changes required, no matter what the sacrifice of social position may be that is involved in the change. The ownership of land without income will not give much distinction. When these changes are complete, the time may perhaps come when simple printed forms of deeds and rules of registration will enable the town clerks, justices of the peace, or other intelligent persons, to do all the work of the conveyancer, as they now do in most of the country towns of New England. In the first half-century, after the settlement of Plymouth Colony, the title to land passed by declaration before the governor or one of his assistants, duly recorded, without the execution of any written deed whatever, and without the signature of the vendor being required. Many of these deeds are in the simplest possible form of description, and are entirely free from legal technicalities. At the present time the written deed of land possesses little importance after the record is made, It will be obvious that this adjustment to the new conditions brought into force by the railroad could not have been made with out very great difficulty in the eastern parts of the United States, had there been any system of landlord and tenant as to farm lands. Had not the purchase, sale, and division of lands been free, the examination of title easy and cheap, and the registration of deeds effective in every county, and had we not been absolutely free from the encumbrances of entails and settlements, we should have been subjected to as great difficulties as are now being met in Great Britain and Ireland. It may be broadly stated, that the adjustment of production to changing conditions, brought into action by science and invention in the United States, has been made possible by the free conditions, not only in the sale, but in the use, of land throughout the country. The modern cheese-factory is an example of an invention requir ing absolute freedom in the use of land. If it were made incumbent on the farmer to feed the refuse of cheese-making to stock upon the land on which the stock fed, the cheese factory would not be practicable. The farmer must sell his milk and restore his land in his own way. Absolute freedom in use is as necessary as freedom in purchase and sale. In respect to wheat, it would be very desirable to be able to treat the subject of the actual cost of production, in-order to state the exact terms of the competition between this country and Great Britain, Several attempts have been made to ascertain the exact cost of production on the field, but it is as difficult as it is to ascertain the cost of raising cotton. Some of the elements may be stated with sufficient accuracy for the purpose of the present inves tigation. We thus consider an extreme case-the wheat produced in the territory of Dakota, from which point it is now brought in very large quantity, and where some of the furrows are said to be a day's journey in length. The soil is in the finest condition, very deep, full of phosphate, lime, and potash, and has been fertilized by myriads of buffalo roaming over it for ages. Estimates of the cost of raising wheat on these bonanza farms," so called, vary from 37 to 50 cents a bushel-or from 12s. 4d. to 16s. 8d. per quar ter. Within the limits of the land grant of the Northern Pacific Railroad, in that section are wheat lands of the very best quality, far more than equal to the area of all the land under cultivation in Great Britain and Ireland. The bonds of the Northern Pacific Railroad (which road failed in 1873, but is now appearing to pros per again) are convertible into these lands, and can be purchased at such prices that the land will not cost the buyer more than $2 or $3 per acre. The great farms now under cultivation cost the owners but a trifle, as they were bought with bonds purchased immediately after the panic at a few cents on the dollar. The average product of wheat is twenty to twenty-five bushels per acre. The intermediate sections of government land can be bought at $1.25 to $2.50 per acre, and are open to actual settlers under the homestead law without cost. The cultivation is all done by machinery; and the grain-binder, invented and applied within two or three years, has done away with the last element of manual labor. It does not seem probable, to say the least, that any other method of cultivation can possibly compete with this, although it is possible that even this section will be excelled in cheapness of production on the irrigated wheat manufactories of Colorado, and in California on lands that are rainless during the harvest season. It is perfectly safe to assume that the production of wheat in this section will increase so long as it brings half a dollar, or two shillings sterling, per bushel. How entirely undetermined the cost of transporting wheat from the Red River of the North, in Dakota, to Liverpool, now is, will be seen by the following statement. The distance may be divided substantially as follows in round figures: From Dakota to Chicago, From Chicago to New York or Boston, Miles. Within a year the rates of freight between Chicago and the seaboard have varied from $3 to $7 per ton of two thousand pounds. From the seaboard to Liverpool, from 3d. to 84d. per bushel, or from $2 to $5.66 per ton. The rate on wheat from Dakota to New York has been from $14 to $16.50 per ton. It will thus appear that the charge on the railroad beyond Chicago for an average of about seven hundred miles has been $9 to $10 per ton; therefore, if the traffic this side of Chicago can be carried on at the price of the last year or two, there is a margin for reduction on the distance beyond Chicago to Dakota of $4 to $6 per ton whenever the railway service in that direction is consolidated and worked as effectively on that side of Chicago as it is on this side. On the whole, it may be said that the charge for moving wheat from the Red River of the North to Liverpool has varied during the past season from $17 to $22 per ton of two thousand pounds, and that there is reason to expect such improvemen that the average rate will be $16 to $20, or 48 cents to 60 cents per bushel. Whatever the wheat brings in Liverpool above this charge and the charge for commissions, insurance, and incidental expenses, constitutes the remuneration of the wheat manufacturer of Dakota. |