The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 08, June 1858: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 08, June 1858: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
One island, which would hardly be missed from the map of the world,
so small that its rivers all fall into the sea mere brooks, with not
more than one-thirteenth as much coal as we have in the United States,
and perhaps not one-hundredth as much iron ore, by the use of
steam-driven machinery produces as much iron and perhaps weaves as
much cloth yearly as all the rest of the world. If it does not the
latter, it would do it, if it could find enough of the raw material
and paying customers. But agriculture, which supplies the raw
material, though it is the first and most universal form of human
labor, lags behind the world's present manufacturing power. One cause
of the late, and perhaps of the previous commercial revulsion, was
this disproportion. The more rapid enlargement of manufacturing
industry, multiplied in power by its machinery, caused the raw
material to rise in price and the manufactured article to fall, till
the operations could not be supported from the profits at the same
time that contracts were fulfilled with capitalists. Manufactures
must pause till agriculture overtakes. Steam-machinery applied to
agriculture is the only thing that can correct this disproportion,
and this is what we are going to make. The world is not to be much
longer dependent for its cotton on the compulsory labor of the Dark
Ages, nor for its flax and corn on blistered free hands or
overworked cattle. The laborer, in either section of our country,
will be transformed into an ingenious gentleman or lady, comfortably
mounted on a migratory steam-cultivator to direct its gigantic
energies,--or, at least, occasionally so occupied. Under this system,
it must be plain enough, to all persons prophetically inclined, that
the Northern valleys will greatly multiply their products, while the
Southern cotton-fields will whiten with heavier crops than human
chattelism ever produced, and the mountains of both latitudes, now
hardly notched with civilization, will roll down the wool of sheep
in clouds.
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