The Steam Engine Familiarly Explained and Illustrated: With an historical sketch of its invention and progressive improvement; its applications to navigation and railways; with plain axioms for railway speculatorsLardner, Dionysius
History
The Steam Engine Familiarly Explained and Illustrated: With an historical sketch of its invention and progressive improvement; its applications to navigation and railways; with plain axioms for railway speculators
Lardner, Dionysius
Steam-engines -- Early works to 1850
But the agriculturist would not merely be benefited by an increased
return from the soil already under cultivation. Any reduction in the
cost of transporting the produce to market would call into cultivation
tracts of inferior fertility, the returns from which would not at
present repay the cost of cultivation and transport. Thus land would
become productive which is now waste, and an effect would be produced
equivalent to adding so much fertile soil to the present extent of the
country. It is well known, that land of a given degree of fertility
will yield increased produce by the increased application of capital
and labour. By a reduction in the cost of transport, a saving will be
made which may enable the agriculturist to apply to tracts already
under cultivation the capital thus saved, and thereby increase their
actual production. Not only, therefore, would such an effect be
attended with an increased extent of cultivated land, but also with an
increased degree of cultivation in that which is already productive.
It has been said, that in Great Britain there are above a million of
horses engaged in various ways in the transport of passengers and
goods, and that to support each horse requires as much land as would,
upon an average, support eight men. If this quantity of animal power
were displaced by steam engines, and the means of transport drawn from
the bowels of the earth, instead of being raised upon its surface,
then, supposing the above calculation correct, as much land would
become available for the support of human beings as would suffice for
an additional population of eight millions; or, what amounts to the
same, would increase the means of support of the present population by
about one-third of the present available means. The land which now
supports horses for transport would then support men, or produce corn
for food.
The objection that a quantity of land exists in the country capable of
supporting horses alone, and that such land would be thrown out of
cultivation, scarcely deserves notice here. The existence of any
considerable quantity of such land is extremely doubtful. What is the
soil which will feed a horse and not feed oxen or sheep, or produce
food for man? But even if it be admitted that there exists in the
country a small portion of such land, that portion cannot exceed, nor
indeed equal, what would be sufficient for the number of horses which
must after all continue to be employed for the purposes of pleasure,
and in a variety of cases where steam must necessarily be
inapplicable. It is to be remembered, also, that the displacing of
horses in one extensive occupation, by diminishing their price must
necessarily increase the demand for them in others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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