§ 1. ROBINSON CRUSOE had made a bow, and had thus acquired wealth. In what, however, did that wealth consist? In the possession of the instrument? Assuredly not; but in the power that it gave him over the natural properties of the wood and the cord - enabling him to substitute the elasticity of the one, and the tenacity of the other, for the muscular contraction by help of which, alone, he had thus far been enabled to obtain supplies of food. Having made a canoe, he found his wealth increased, because by help of his new machine he could command the services of water-and, as nature always works gratuitously, all the addition he was now enabled to make to his supplies, was obtained wholly free of cost. Having erected a pole in his canoe, and placed upon it a skin by way of sail, he was enabled to command the services of the wind, and thus still further to increase his power to move from place to place; and so did his wealth steadily increase.

Let us suppose, however, that instead of having been led by observation of the properties of wood to make a bow, he had found one, and had been so deficient in knowledge as to be unable to use it; would his wealth in this case have been increased? Certainly not. The bow would have been as useless as the trees with which the land was covered. Or, suppose he had found a canoe, and had been as ignorant of the properties of water, or of wood, as we may well suppose to have been the case with the wild men of Germany and of India; would he not have remained as poor as he before had been? That such would have been the case, cannot be doubted. If so, then wealth cannot consist in the mere possession of an instrument, unconnected with the knowledge how to use it. Were a thousand bows given to a man who had been blind from birth, he would be no richer than before

and were we to transfer to the savages of the Rocky Mountains, all property in the mills and furnaces of the Union, they would find therein no addition to their wealth for their liability to perish of hunger, or of cold, would remain unchanged; although they had thus become the owners of machinery capable of producing all the implements required for enabling them to obtain food and clothing in abundance, were they but possessed of knowledge Books and newspapers would not be wealth to the man who could not read, but food would be. - and he might gladly give a whole library for as much grain as would support him for a single year.

For thousands of years, the people of England were in possession of almost boundless supplies of that fuel, a bushel of which is capable of raising one hundred thousand pounds a foot in a minute, and thus doing as much work as could be done by hundreds of men; and yet that fuel was not wealth, because of the want of knowledge how to utilize its powers. The force was there, latent; but it was not until the days of Watt, that man was enabled to compel it to labor in his service. So it has been with the anthracite coal-mines of Pennsylvania. That fuel was purer and better than any other—and capable, therefore, of doing a greater amount of work; but, for that reason, it required a higher degree of knowledge for the development of its latent powers. The greater the power to be useful the greater the amount of utility latent in a commodity, or thing - the greater is always the amount of resistance to be overcome, in subjecting it to the control of man. That once done, the power thus acquired, centres in THE MAN, whose value steadily rises, as the utility of the raw material by which he is surrounded, becomes more and more developed.

The first poor cultivator commences, as we have seen, his operations on the hill-side. Below him are lands that have, for ages, received the washings of those above, as well as the leaves of trees, and the fallen trees themselves, all of which have, from time immemorial, decayed and become incorporated with the earth thus forming soils fitted to yield the largest returns to labor; yet for that reason are they inaccessible. Their character exhibits itself in the large trees with which they are covered, and in their capacity for retaining the water required for aiding the process

of decomposition; but the poor settler has no power either to clear them of their timber, or to drain them of the superfluous moisture. He begins on the hill-side; but with the increase of his family, and the improvement of his machinery of cultivation, we find him descending the hill, and obtaining not only more food for himself, but also the means of feeding the horse, or the ox, required to assist him in his labors. Aided by the manure yielded to him by the better lands, we see his successors next retracing his steps, improving the hill-side, and compelling it to yield a return twice greater than had been at first obtained. With each step down the hill, they obtain still larger reward for labor; and from each they return, with increased power, to the cultivation of the original poor soil. They have now horses and oxen; and while, by their aid, they extract from the new soils the manure that had for ages accumulated, they have also carts and wagons to carry it up the hill; and with every additional step, their rewards become increased, while their labors are lessened. They go back to the sand and raise the marl, with which they cover the surface; or return to the clay and sink into the limestone, by aid of which they double their products. They are all the time making a machine which feeds them while making it, and which increases in its powers the more there is taken from it. At first, it was worthless; but now-having fed and clothed them for years it has become so greatly useful, that those who might desire to use it would pay largely for the permission so to do.

The earth is a great machine given to man to be fashioned to his purpose. The more he fashions it, the better it feeds him, because each step is but preparatory to a new one more productive than the last-requiring less labor and yielding larger return. The labor of clearing is great; yet the return is small, the earth being covered with stumps, and filled with roots. With each year the latter decay, and the ground becomes enriched; while the labor of ploughing is diminished. At length, the stumps having disappeared, the return is doubled, while the labor is less by onehalf than at first. To forward this process, the owner has done nothing but crop the ground-nature having done the rest. The aid she thus grants him, yields far more food than had been at first obtained in return to the labor of clearing the land. This, however, is not all. The surplus thus yielded has given

him the means of improving the poorer lands-furnishing manure with which to enrich them-and thus has he trebled, or quadrupled, his original return without further effort; that which he saves in working the new soils, sufficing to carry the manure to the older ones. He is thus obtaining a daily increased power over the various treasures of the earth.

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With every operation connected with the subjection of the earth to the control of man, the result is the same the first step being, invariably, the most costly one, and the least productive.* The drain commences necessarily near the stream, where the labor is heaviest; yet it frees from water but little land. Further distant, the same quantity of labor, profiting by what has been already done, frees thrice the extent; and now the most perfect system of thorough drainage may be established with less effort than had been at first required for one of the most imperfect kind. To bring the lime into connection with the clay, upon fifty acres, is lighter labor than had been the clearing of a single one; yet the process doubles the return for every acre of the fifty. The man who requires a little fuel for his own use, expends much labor in opening the neighboring vein of coal. To enlarge this, so as to double the product, is a work of comparatively small effort; as is the next enlargement, by which he is enabled to use a wagon, giving him a return fifty times greater than had been obtained while still dependent upon his own unassisted powers. To sink a shaft to the first vein below the surface, and erect a steamengine, are expensive operations—but then to sink to a second, and tunnel to a third, are trifles in comparison with the first; yet each is equally productive. The first line of railroad runs by houses and towns occupied by a few hundred thousand persons Little branches are next made, costing altogether far less labor than the first, but bringing into connection with it probably thrice the amount of population. The trade increasing, a second track, a third, or a fourth, may be required. The original one facilitating

*The French proverb-Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute-is true in regard to all the relations of life; but in none is it more emphatically so than in reference to the occupation of land. Such being the case, it will readily be seen how destructive of the best interests of man must be a system which looking to the constant exhaustion of the soil, produces a perpetually increasing necessity for commencing the work of cultivation on new lands, to be in their turn exhausted.

the passage of the materials and the removal of the obstructions, three new ones may now be made for less than had been expended the first.

upon

All labor thus given to fashioning the great machine is but the prelude to its further application, with increased returns and rise of wages; and hence it is that portions of the machine, as it exists, invariably exchange, when brought to market, for far less. labor than they have cost. The man who cultivated the thin soils was happy to obtain a hundred bushels for his year's workbut with the progress of himself and his neighbors down the hill, into the more fertile soils, wages have risen, and two hundred bushels may be now required. His farm will yield a thousand bushels but it requires the labor 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 may have cost- in the labor of himself, his sons, and his assistants the equivalent of a hundred years of labor, or perhaps far more. During all this time, however, it has fed and clothed them all; and the farm has been produced by insensible contributions made from year to year, unthought of and unfelt.

It is now 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 power to serve the purposes of man, it was worth nothing. Such is the case with the earth everywhere. The more there is taken from it the more there is found to exist. 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, being held in low esteem, leases were granted at almost nominal rents. Now, notwithstanding the great quantities that have been removed, such leases are deemed equivalent to the possession of large fortunes; although the amount of ore elsewhere known to exist, is probably a hundred times increased.

The rich lands above described the coal, the lime, and the ore -were, a century since as much as they are now, possessed of the power to contribute to the comfort and enjoyment of man; yet they were not wealth, because he himself was deficient in the knowledge required for enabling him to compel them to labor in VOL. I.-13