HOW WEALTH TENDS TO INCREASE.
The first poor cultivator commences, as we have seen, his operations
on the hillside. Below him are lands upon which have been carried by
force of water the richer portions of those above, as well as the
leaves of trees, and the fallen trees themselves, all of which have
from time immemorial rotted and become incorporated with the earth,
and thus have been produced soils fitted to yield the largest returns
to labour; yet for this reason are they inaccessible. Their character
exhibits itself in the enormous trees with which they are covered, and
in their power of retaining the water necessary to aid the process of
decomposition, but the poor settler wants the power either to clear
them of their timber, or to drain them of the superfluous moisture. He
begins on the hillside, but by degrees he obtains better machinery of
cultivation, and with each step in this direction we find him
descending the hill and obtaining larger return to labour. He has more
food for himself, and he has now the means of feeding a horse or an
ox. Aided by the manure that is thus yielded to him by the better
lands, we see him next retracing his steps, improving the hillside,
and compelling it to yield a return double that which he at first
obtained. With each step down the hill, he obtains still larger reward
for his labour, and at each he returns, with increased power, to the
cultivation of the original poor soil. He has now horses and oxen, and
while by their aid he extracts from the new soils the manure that had
accumulated for ages, he has also carts and wagons to carry it up the
hill; and at each step his reward is increased, while his labours are
lessened. He goes back to the sand and raises the marl, with which he
covers the surface; or he returns to the clay and sinks into the
limestone, by aid of which he doubles its product. He is all the time
making a machine which feeds him while he makes it, and which
increases in its powers the more he takes from it. At first it was
worthless. Having now fed and clothed him for years, it has acquired a
large value, and those who might desire to use it would pay him a
large rent for permission so to do.
The earth is a great machine given to man to be fashioned to his
purpose. The more he works it, the better it feeds him, because each
step is but preparatory to a new one more productive than the
last--requiring less labour and yielding larger return. The labour of
clearing is great, yet the return is small. The earth is covered with
stumps, and filled with roots. With each year the roots decay, and the
ground becomes enriched, while the labour of ploughing is diminished.
At length, the stumps disappear, and the return is doubled, while the
labour is less by one-half than at first. To forward this process the
owner has done nothing but crop the ground, nature having done the
rest. The aid he thus obtains from her yields him as much food as in
the outset was obtained by the labour of felling the trees. This,
however, is not all. The surplus thus yielded has given him means of
improving the poorer lands, by furnishing manure with which to enrich
them, and thus has he trebled his original return without further
labour; for that which he saves in working the new soils suffices to
carry the manure to the older ones. He is obtaining a daily increased
power over the various treasures of the earth.
With every operation connected with the fashioning of the earth, the
result is the same. The first step is, invariably, the most costly
one, and the least productive. The first drain commences near the
stream, where the labour is heaviest. It frees from water but a few
acres. A little higher, the same quantity of labour, profiting by what
has been already done, frees twice the number. Again the number is
doubled; and now the most perfect system of thorough drainage may be
established with less labour than was at first required for one of the
most imperfect kind. To bring the lime into connection with the clay,
upon fifty acres, is lighter labour than was the clearing of a single
one, yet the process doubles the return for each acre of fifty. The
man who needs a little fuel for his own use, expends much labour in
opening the neighbouring vein of coal; but to enlarge this, so as to
double the product, is a work of comparatively small labour. To sink a
shaft to the first vein below the surface, and erect a steam-engine,
are expensive operations; but these once accomplished, every future
step becomes more productive, while less costly. To sink to the next
vein below, and to tunnel to another, are trifles in comparison with
the first, yet each furnishes a return equally large. The first line
of railroad runs by houses and towns occupied by two or three hundred
thousand persons. Half a dozen little branches, costing together far
less labour than the first, bring into connection with it half a
million, or perhaps a million. The trade increases, and a second
track, a third, or a fourth, may be required. The original one
facilitates the passage of the materials and the removal of the
obstructions, and three new ones may now be made with less labour than
was at first required for a single one.
All labour thus expended in fashioning the great machine is but the
prelude to the application of further labour, with still increased
returns. With each such application, wages rise, and hence it is that
portions of the machine, as it exists, invariably exchange, when
brought to market, for far less labour than they have cost. There is
thus a steady decline of the value of capital in labour, and a daily
increase in the power of labour over capital, and with each step in
this direction man becomes more free. The man who cultivated the thin
soils was happy to obtain a hundred bushels for his year's work. With
the progress of himself and his neighbour down the hill into the more
fertile soils, wages have risen, and two hundred bushels are now
required. His farm will yield a thousand bushels; but it requires the
labour of four men, who must have two hundred bushels each, and the
surplus is but two hundred bushels. At twenty years' purchase this
gives a capital of four thousand bushels, or the equivalent of twenty
years' wages; whereas it has cost, in the labour of himself, his sons,
and his assistants, the equivalent of a hundred years of labour, or
perhaps far more. During all this time, however, it has fed and
clothed them all, and the farm has been produced by the insensible
contributions made from year to year, unthought of and unfelt.
It has become worth twenty years' wages, because its owner has for
years taken from it a thousand bushels annually; but when it had lain
for centuries accumulating wealth it was worth nothing. Such is the
case with the earth everywhere. The more that is taken from it the
more there is to be returned, and the greater our power to draw upon
it. When the coal-mines of England were untouched, they were
valueless. Now their value is almost countless; yet the land contains
abundant supplies for thousands of years. Iron ore, a century since,
was a drug, and leases were granted at almost nominal rents. Now, such
leases are deemed equivalent to the possession of large fortunes,
notwithstanding the great quantities that have been removed, although
the amount of ore now known to exist is probably fifty times greater
than it was then.
_The earth is the sole producer._ From her man receives the corn and
the cotton-wool, and all that he can do is to change them in their
form, or in their place. The first he may convert into bread, and the
last into cloth, and both maybe transported to distant places, but
there his power ends. He can make no addition to their quantity. A
part of his labour is applied to the preparation and improvement of
the great machine of production, and this produces changes that are
permanent. The drain, once cut, remains a drain; and the limestone,
once reduced to lime, never again becomes limestone. It passes into
the food of man and animals, and ever after takes its part in the same
round with the clay with which it has been incorporated. The iron
rusts and gradually passes into soil, to take its part with the clay
and the lime. That portion of his labour gives him wages while
preparing the machine for greater future production. That other
portion which he expends on fashioning and exchanging _the products_
of the machine, produces temporary results and gives him wages alone.
Whatever tends to diminish the quantity of labour required for the
production of food tends to enable him to give more to the preparation
of machinery required for the fashioning and exchanging of the
products; and that machinery in its turn tends to augment the quantity
that may be given to increasing the amount of products, and to
preparing the great machine; and thus, while increasing the present
return to labour, preparing for a future further increase.
The first poor cultivator obtains a hundred bushels for his year's
wages. To pound this between two stones requires many days of labour,
and the work is not half done. Had he a mill in the neighbourhood he
would have better flour, and he would have almost the whole of those
days to bestow upon his land. He pulls up his grain. Had he a scythe,
he would have more time for the preparation of the machine of
production. He loses his axe, and it requires days of himself and his
horse on the road, to obtain another. His machine loses the time and
the manure, both of which would have been saved had the axe-maker been
at hand. The real advantage derived from the mill and the scythe, and
from the proximity of the axe-maker, consists simply in the power
which they afford him to devote his labour more and more to the
preparation of the great machine of production, and such is the case
with all the machinery of conversion and exchange. The plough enables
him to do as much in one day as with a spade he could do in five. He
saves four days for drainage. The steam-engine drains as much as,
without it, could be drained by thousands of days of labour. He has
more leisure to marl or lime his land. The more he can extract from
his property the greater is its value, because every thing he takes
is, by the very act of taking it, fashioned to aid further production.
The machine, therefore, improves by use, whereas spades, and ploughs,
and steam-engines, and all other of the instruments used by man, are
but the various forms into which he fashions parts of the great
original machine, to disappear in the act of being used; as much so as
food, though not so rapidly. The earth is the great labour-savings'
bank, and the value to man of all other machines is in the direct
ratio of their tendency to aid him in increasing his deposites in that
only bank whose dividends are perpetually increasing, while its
capital is perpetually doubling. That it may continue for ever so to
do, all that it asks is that it shall receive back the refuse of its
produce, the manure; and that it may do so, the consumer and the
producer must take their places by each other. That done, every change
that is effected becomes permanent, and tends to facilitate other and
greater changes. The whole business of the farmer consists in making
and improving soils, and the earth rewards him for his kindness by
giving him more and more food the more attention he bestows upon her.
All that he receives from her must be regarded as a loan, and when he
fails to pay his debts, she starves him out.
The absolute necessity for returning to the land the manure yielded by
its products is so generally admitted that it would appear scarcely
necessary to do more than state the fact; for every land-owner knows
that when he grants the lease of a farm, one of the conditions he
desires to insert is, that all the hay that is made shall be fed upon
the land, and that manure shall be purchased to supply the waste
resulting from the sale of corn or flax from off the land. In order,
however, that it may be so supplied, it is indispensable that the
place of consumption shall not be far distant from the place of
production, as otherwise the cost of transportation will be greater
than the value of the manure. In a recent work on the agriculture of
Mecklenburgh, it is stated that a quantity of grain that would be
worth close to market fifteen hundred dollars would be worth nothing
at a distance of fifty German, or about two hundred English miles,
from it, as the whole value would be absorbed in the cost of
transporting the grain to market and the manure from market--and that
the manure which close to the town would be worth five dollars to the
farmer, would be worth nothing at a distance of 4-3/4 German, or 19
English miles from it--and that thus the whole question of the value
of land and the wealth of its owner was dependent upon its distance
from the place at which its products could be exchanged. At a greater
distance than 28 German, or 112 English miles, in Mecklenburgh, the
land ceases to yield rent, because it cannot be cultivated without
loss. As we approach the place of exchange the value of land
increases, from the simultaneous action of two causes: First, a
greater variety of commodities can be cultivated, and the advantage
resulting from a rotation of crops is well known. At a distance, the
farmer can raise only those of which the earth yields but little, and
which are valuable in proportion to their little bulk--as, for
instance, wheat or cotton; but near the place of exchange he may raise
potatoes, turnips, cabbages, and hay, of which the bulk is great in
proportion to the value. Second, the cost of returning the manure to
the land increases as the value of the products of land diminishes
with the increase of distance; and from the combination of these two
causes, land in Mecklenburgh that would be worth, if close to the town
or city, an annual rent of 29,808 dollars, would be worth at a
distance of but 4 German, or 16 English, miles, only 7,467 dollars.
We see thus, how great is the tendency to the growth of wealth as men
are enabled more and more to combine their exertions with those of
their fellow-men, consuming on or near the land the products of the
land, and enabling the farmer, not only to repair readily the
exhaustion caused by each successive crop, but also to call to his aid
the services of the chemist in the preparation of artificial manures,
as well as to call into activity the mineral ones by which he is
almost everywhere surrounded. We see, too, how much it must be opposed
to the interests of every community to have its products exported in
their rude state, and thus to have its land exhausted. The same author
from whom the above quotations have been made informs us that when the
manure is not returned to the land the yield must diminish from year
to year, until at length it will not be more than one-fourth of what
it had originally been: and this is in accordance with all
observation.
The natural tendency of the loom and the anvil to seek to take their
place by the side of the plough and harrow, is thus exhibited by ADAM
SMITH:--
"An inland country, naturally fertile and easily cultivated, produces
a great surplus of provisions beyond what is necessary for
maintaining the cultivators; and on account of the expense of land
carriage, and inconveniency of river navigation, it may frequently be
difficult to send this surplus abroad. Abundance, therefore, renders
provisions cheap, and encourages a great number of workmen to settle
in the neighbourhood, who find that their industry can there procure
them more of the necessaries and conveniences of life than in other
places. They work up the materials of manufacture which the land
produces, and exchange their finished work, or, what is the same
thing, the price of it, for more materials and provisions. _They give
a new value to the surplus part of the rude produce, by saving the
expense of carrying it to the waterside, or to some distant market_;
and they furnish the cultivators with something in exchange for it,
that is either useful or agreeable to them, upon easier terms than
they could have obtained it before. _The cultivators get a better
price for their surplus produce, and can purchase cheaper other
conveniences which they have occasion for._ They are thus both
encouraged and enabled to increase this surplus produce by a further
improvement and better cultivation of the land; and _as the fertility
of the land has given birth to the manufacture, so the progress of
the manufacture reacts upon the land, and increases still further its
fertility_. The manufacturers first supply the neighbourhood, and
afterward, as their work improves and refines, more distant markets.
_For though neither the rude produce, nor even the coarse
manufacture, could, without the greatest difficulty, support the
expense of a considerable land carriage, the refined and improved
manufacture easily may._ In a small bulk it frequently contains the
price of a great quantity of the raw produce. A piece of fine cloth,
for example, which weighs, only eighty pounds, contains in it the
price, not only of eighty pounds of wool, but sometimes of several
thousand weight of corn, the maintenance of the different working
people, and of their immediate employers. _The corn which could with
difficulty have been carried abroad in its own shape, is in this
manner virtually exported in that of the complete manufacture, and
may easily be sent to the remotest corners of the world._"
Again:
"The greater the number and revenue of the inhabitants of the town,
the more extensive is the market which it affords to those of the
country; and the more extensive that market, it is always the more
advantageous to a great number. The corn which grows within a mile of
the town, sells there for the same price with that which comes from
twenty miles distance. But the price of the latter must, generally,
not only pay the expense of raising it and bringing it to market, but
afford, too, the ordinary profits, of agriculture to the farmer. The
proprietors and cultivators of the country, therefore, which lies in
the neighbourhood of the town, over and above the ordinary profits of
agriculture, gain, in the price of what they sell, the whole value of
the carriage of the like produce that is brought from more distant
parts; and they save, besides, the whole value of this carriage in
the price of what they buy. Compare the cultivation of the lands in
the neighbourhood of any considerable town, with that of those which
lie at some distance from it, and you will easily satisfy yourself
how much the country is benefited by the commerce of the town."
These views are in perfect accordance with the facts. The labourer
rejoices when the market for his labour is brought to his door by the
erection of a mill or a furnace, or the construction of a road. The
farmer rejoices in the opening of a market for labour at his door
giving him a market for his food. His land rejoices in the home
consumption of the products it has yielded, for its owner is thereby
enabled to return to it the refuse of its product in the form of
manure. The planter rejoices in the erection of a mill in his
neighbourhood, giving him a market for his cotton and his food. The
parent rejoices when a market for their labour enables his sons and
his daughters to supply themselves with food and clothing. Every one
rejoices in the growth of a home market for labour and its products,
for trade is then increasing daily and rapidly; and every one mourns
the diminution of the home market, for it is one the deficiency of
which cannot be supplied.
With each step in this direction man becomes more and more free as
land becomes more valuable and labour becomes more productive, and as
the land becomes more divided. The effect of this upon both the man
and the land is thus exhibited by Dr. Smith:--
"A small proprietor, who knows every part of his little territory,
views it with all the affection which property, especially small
property, naturally inspires, and who upon that account takes
pleasure not only in cultivating, but in adorning it, is generally of
all improvers the most industrious, the most intelligent, and the
most successful."
The tendency of the land to become divided as wealth and population
increase will be obvious to the reader on an examination of the facts
of daily occurrence in and near a growing town or city; and the
contrary tendency to the consolidation of land in few hands may be
seen in the neighbourhood of all declining towns or cities, and
throughout all declining states.[25]