a horse-churn, when they are resolved against a winnowing machine? The truth is, these poor men perceive, even in the midst of their excesses, the gross deception of the reasons which induce them to commit them. Their motive is a natural, and if lawfully expressed, a proper impatience, under a condition which has certainly many hardships, and those hardships in great part produced by the want of profitable labor. But in imputing those hardships to machinery, they are at once embarrassed when they come to draw distinctions between one sort of machine and another. This embarrassment decidedly shows that there are fearful mistakes at the bottom of their furious hostility to machinery. Some of these mistakes it is the object of this little book to clear up. We apply ourselves to the task with a confident hope of doing good, because in this very embarrassment we perceive the working of a conscientious principle. There is much ignorance to be encountered; but there is a disposition for honest inquiry, which will, in time, produce the best effects.

CHAPTER III.

Ir has been said by persons whose opinions are worthy attention, that spade-husbandry is, in some cases, better than plow-husbandry; —that is, that the earth, under particular circumstances of soil and situation, may be more fitly prepared for the influences of the atmo

sphere, by digging, than by plowing. It is not our business to enter into a consideration of this question. The growth of corn is a manufacture, in which man employs the chemical properties of the soil and of the air, in conjunction with his own labor, aided by certain tools or machines, for the production of a crop; and that power, whether of chemistry or machinery,-whether of the salt, or the chalk, or the dung which he puts upon the earth, or the spade or the plow which he puts into it, that power which does the work easiest is necessarily the best, because it diminishes the cost of production. If the plow does not do the work so well as the spade, it is a less perfect machine; but the less perfect machine may be preferred to the more perfect, because, taking other conditions into consideration, it is a cheaper machine. If the spade, applied in a peculiar manner by the strength and judgment of the man using it, more completely turns up the soil, breaks the clods, and removes the weeds, than the plow, which receives one uniform direction from man with the assistance of other animal power, then the spade is a more perfect machine in its combination with human labor, than the plow is, worked with a lesser degree of the same combination. But still it may be a machine which cannot be used with advantage to the producer, and is therefore not desirable for the consumer. All such questions must be determined by the cost of production; and that cost in agriculture is made up of the rent of land, the profit of capital, and the

wages of labor-or the portions of the produce belonging to the landlord, the farmer, and the laborer. Where rent is high, as in the immediate neighborhood of large towns, it is important to have the labor performed as carefully as possible. It is then economy to turn the soil to the greatest account, and the land is cultivated as a garden. Where rent is low, it is important to have the labor performed with less care, because one acre cultivated by hand may cost more than two cultivated by the plow. It is then economy to save in the labor, and the land is cultivated as a field. In one case, the machine called a spade is used; in the other, the machine called a plow is employed. The use of the one or the other belongs to practical agriculture, and is a question only of relative cost.

And this brings us to the great principle of all machinery. A tool of the simplest construction is a machine; a machine of the most curious construction is only a complicated tool. There are many cases in the arts, and there may be cases in agriculture, in which the human arm and hand, with or without a tool, may do work that no machine can so well perform. There are processes in polishing, and there is a process in copper-plate printing, in which no substance has been found to stand in the place of the human hand. And if, therefore, the man with a spade alone does a certain agricultural work more completely than a man guiding a plow, and a team of horses dragging it, (which we do not affirm or deny,) the only reason for

this is, that the man with the spade is a better machine than the man with the plow and the horses. The most stupid man that ever existed is, beyond all comparison, a machine more cunningly made by the hands of his Creator, more perfect in all his several parts, and with all his parts more exquisitely adapted to the regulated movement of the whole body, less liable to accidents, and less injured by wear and tear, than the most beautiful machine that ever was, or ever will be, invented. There is no possibility of supplying in many cases a substitute for the simplest movements of man's body, by the most complicated movements of the most ingenious machinery. And why so? Because the natural machinery by which a man even lifts his hand to his head is at once so complex and so simple, so apparently easy and yet so entirely dependent upon the right adjustment of a great many contrary forces, that no automaton, or machine imitating the actions of man, could ever be made to effect this seemingly simple motion, without showing that the contrivance was imperfect,—that it was a mere imitation, and a very clumsy one. What an easy thing it appears to be for a farming-man to thrash his corn with a flail; and yet what an expensive arrangement of wheels is necessary to produce the same effects with a thrashing machine. The truth is, that the man's arm and the flail form a much more curious machine, than the other machine of wheels, which does the same work; and the real question as regards the value of the two

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machines is, which machine in the greater degree lessens the cost of production?

We state this principle broadly, in our examination into the value of machinery in diminishing the cost of producing human food. A machine is not perfect, because it is made of wheels or cylinders, employs the power of the screw or the lever, is driven by wind, or water, or steam, but because it best assists the labor of man, by calling into action some power which he does not possess in himself. If we could imagine a man entirely dispossessed of this power, we should see the feeblest of animal beings. He has no tools which are a part of himself, to build houses like the beaver, or cells like the bee. He has not even learnt from nature to build, instinctively, by certain and unchangeable rules. His power is in his mind; and that mind teaches him to subject all the physical world to his dominion, by availing himself of the forces which nature has spread around him. To aet upon material objects he arms his weakness with tools and with machines. As we have before said, tools and machines are in principle the same. When we strike a nail upon the head with a hammer, we avail ourselves of a power which we find in nature-the effect produced by the concussion of two bodies; when we employ a water-wheel to beat out a lump of iron with a much larger hammer, we still avail ourselves of the same power. There is no difference in the nature of the instruments, although we call the one a tool, and the other