The reader may determine for himself if this is not a fair picture of the cotton trade? Do the planters profit by good crops? Assuredly not. The more they send to market the less they receive for it. Do they profit by improvements in the transportation of their commodity? Certainly not. With the growth of railroads, cotton has fallen in price, and will not this day command on the plantation near as much, per pound, as it did before the railroad was invented. In India, the cost of transportation from the place of production to England has fallen in the last forty years sevenpence,[142] and yet the grower of cotton obtains for it one-third less than he did before--receiving now little more than two cents, when before he had from three to four. Who profits by the reduction of cost of transportation and conversion? _The man who keeps the toll-gate through which it passes to the world_, and who opens it only gradually, so as to permit the increased quantity to pass through slowly, paying largely for the privilege. That all this is perfectly in accordance with the facts of the ease must be obvious to every reader. The planter becomes rich when crops are short, but then the mill-owner makes but little profit. He is almost ruined when crops are large, but then it is that the mill-owner is enriched--and thus it is that the system produces universal discord, whereas under a natural system there would be as perfect harmony of national, as there is of individual interests. We may now inquire how this would affect the farmers around Rochester. The consumption of the Middle States would be largely diminished because of the heavy expense of transporting the wheat to mill and the flour back again, and this would cause a great increase of the surplus for which a market must be elsewhere found. This, of course, would reduce prices, and prevent increase, if it did not produce large diminution in the value of land. The millers would become _millionaires_--great men among their poorer neighbours--and they would purchase large farms to be managed by great farmers, and fine houses surrounded by large pleasure-grounds. Land would become everywhere more and more consolidated, because people who could do so would fly from a country in which such a tyranny existed. The demand for labour would diminish as the smaller properties became absorbed. Rochester itself would grow, because it would be filled with cheap labour from the country, seeking employment, and because there would be great numbers of wagoners and their horses to be cared for, while porters innumerable would be engaged in carrying wheat in one direction and flour in another. Hotels would grow large, thieves and prostitutes would abound, and morals would decline. From year to year the millers would become greater men, and the farmers and labourers smaller men, and step by step all would find themselves becoming slaves to the caprices of the owners of a little machinery, the whole