PART FIRST. RELATION OF AGRICULTURE TO PROGRESS. CHAPTER I. ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. Order is the condition of all progress; progress is the object of order. It is rational to look at the evolution of society from a historical stand-point."-Auguste Comte. THE MASONIC FRATERNITY-GUILDS-MOVEMENTS OF LABOR IN THE PRESENT CEN TURY --THE SPIRIT OF INDUSTRY CONSTRUCTIVE--WHAT EQUALITY IS—How EDUCATION PROMOTES EQUALITY-SELF LOVE vs. SOCIAL FEELING — MR. SEWARD'S OPINION- ALL GREAT MOVEMENTS HISTORICAL AS WELL AS PROGRESSIVE. The history of the Masonic Fraternity is that of the first attempt of labor to elevate itself by organization. Originally consisting of a simple association of practical builders, who traveled from place to place in pursuance of their calling; they gave the name of lodges to their temporary camps, and bound themselves by the solemnities of an oath and ritual to coöperation and fellowship. The advantages thus gained for defense were equally powerful for improvement, the skill of each became a tangible benefit to all; the offices were elective, and conferred honor upon the most skillful and capable. From this simple beginning, a purely industrial and social order was not only enabled to maintain and extend itself through the most turbulent periods of European history, but to become a teacher of democratic and religious principles, and to exercise in many cases a controlling influence upon the policy of governments. In process of time, actual participation in a particular calling was no longer required, a symbolic representation of the underlying truths and principles of the order, sufficing to preserve its unity and usefulness. During the middle ages, other classes of laborers organized into guilds, and wrought out their emancipation from the condition of serfs to that of freemen. In all these movements, those mechanic arts which were nearest to the necessities imposed by war, took precedence. Next in order were those which ministered most directly to the luxury and vanity of kings and nobles. It was reserved for the latest and most Christian era to witness the uprising of the agricultural class to a true understanding of its office in the social economy, of its disabilities, and their proper remedy. The movement which has been so nearly simultaneous in England and America, finds its explanation in conditions and dangers almost identical in their nature and effects, though differing in many important particulars. In England, for instance, a monopoly of land, without suffrage, has degraded the farm laborer to a state of helplessness, for which emigration seems the only remedy. In America, though land is abundant and cheap, and suffrage universal, the centralization of the power of capital has created other monopolies, which, having obtained a controlling influence in the government, are equally subversive of the interests of the people. The English farm laborer tills another man's land at starvation wages; the American farmer tills his own at starvation prices, while the rich are growing richer, and the poor poorer, and the separation of society into antagonistic classes, is becoming more and more complete. No single individual, or class of mankind, has intentionally set itself to construct an oppressive system; these are evil growths in the rank soil of human selfishness. The responsibility of their existence should be shared even by those who suffer from them, lacking the individuality and selfrespect to maintain the position of freemen. It is probably not more just to blame capital for the exclusive attention it pays to its own interests, than to blame labor for neglecting to claim the consideration that is due to its influence upon the public welfare. During all the vicissitudes through which industry has passed, there have been reasons why the masses of the people could not look upon the accumulation of capital as the first step in its own progress. They had too often experienced its oppressive power to appreciate its constructive value; they HOW EDUCATION PROMOTES EQUALITY. 19 have not always remembered that a large capital has the same inviolable character as a small one; that the banker's millions (if they are savings), are as sacred as the peasant's cow and miner's pick. Edward About, in his admirable papers to workingmen, says: “To lay violent hands upon capital is to attack the incarnation of labor, and it is as monstrous to strip a man of his savings as to reduce him to slavery. Slavery is the confiscation of potential labor, the other crime would confiscate labor performed." This whole subject may be put in a nutshell. All men set out in life with more or less capital, the gift of nature. To that is added, in proportions not more varied than are the natural faculties of men, a share in the savings of those who have gone before. Capital, therefore, as we stand related to it to-day, is the saving of either the product of nature or of labor. Education, which adds so much to every man's natural capital of intellectual faculty, and gives him the power to call it into service at any time, also enables him to take a greater share in the accumulation of others. It is the great equalizer of human conditions. It is both a power and a preparation for the exercise of power. The ignorance, the partial and defective education of laboring men, whether farmers or mechanics, is the most serious drawback to their progress; and from whatever monopolies they suffer, that of education is the worst. Hitherto, the superior training and culture of the aristocratic and professional classes have given them preponderance in government; they have, naturally enough, made laws to suit their own interests. It makes little difference whether we live under a tyranay which denies us rights, or one which monopolizes privilege. The division of men into classes has been maintained by the inequalties of intellectual condition. They must necessarily disappear; an equal and just distribution of the good things created by labor, must necessarily arise whenever labor is intelligent enough to create its own safeguards. Self-love is still so much stronger than social feeling in the human breast, that no man can safely entrust the irresponsible guardianship of his well-being to another. This is as true of classes as of individuals. Social progressyrtherefore, depends upon a true equality; a true reciprocity. Said William H. Seward: “Free labor has at last apprehended its rights, its interests, its powers and its destiny, and is learning how to organize itself in America.” The final organization is far in the future; the germ of it lay far back in the past. No great constructive movement can originate which is not historical as well as progressive in its spirit; it must otherwise limit itself to temporary conditions, and a few generations. In order that we may rightly understand the work of our noble order, the Patrons of Husbandry, we need to examine the economy of civilized society, and the relations of agriculture to civilization. “The hand is almost valueless at one end of the arm if there be not a brain at the other end."--Horace Mann. MAN AND NATURE-AGRICULTURE THE FOUNDATION OF INDUSTRY--RAW MATE RIALS-FIRST STEPS TOWARD MANUFACTURES--CIVILIZATION REGARDS ALL THE RELATIONS OF AGRICULTURE TO THE PROFESSIONS: TO THE GROWTH OF . In the beginning, man was alone with nature. Without arts, without capital, without implements, he took his sustenance from the bosom of the earth, as the common mother of the race. It was his destiny not only to share the spontaneous productions of nature with his fellow animals, but to search out the physical elements and determine their capabilities; to make the needful combinations—to bring into action their productive powers; not only to supply the animal wants, and minister to the pleasure of his organic nature, but to render them tributary to his intellectual, moral and social development, and his ultimate spiritual elevation and weil being. In the discharge of this great duty, every avocation of man has its work to perform. It is the province of agriculture to begin the process by the tilling of the ground, as the term imports, by stimulating and guiding the productive energies of the physical elements to results infinitely transcending, in AGRICULTURE THE FOUNDATION OF INDUSTRY. 21 quantity and quality, the yield of the same elements, unaided by human agency. The gross results of agriculture constitute what is called Raw Material, because, with the exception of fruits and green vegetables, material products do not come from the band of the agriculturist prepared for human use. They are gross and incomplete; the proper material which the arts are to take and fashion into forms of utility and beauty, adapted to the satisfaction of the physical wants, and the gratification of the tastes of men. In the three great classes of our physical wants,-food, clothing and shelter,-how few are the commodities which come from the agriculturist ready for the consumer. Men want not wheat, but bread; therefore the crop, as raw material, must be subjected to the manufacturing processes of the miller and baker. Men want not wool, but clothes; therefore the fleece must undergo successive changes in the hands of the carder, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller and the dyer, before it reappears in the form of cloth. And what does the cloth avail, till the tailor, with his divine art, finishes—the man? So men want not timber and stone, but houses, barns, ships, temples of education and temples of religion; and here again the raw material must be subjected to numberless changes to fit it for the purposes of masonry and architecture. It is obvious, therefore, that there is nothing in the hands of the artisan, the merchant or the manufacturer, that has not previously been in the hands of the farmer. Agriculture thus lies at the foundation of the economical structure of society. But too much of relative dignity and importance must not be assumed by agriculture in consequence of this distinction. To him who enjoys the final product, the initial, the medial, and the finishing process, are all equally important. It is true, that without the raw material furnished by. the agriculturist, the occupation of the artisan, merchant and manufacturer is gone forever. But without the labors of these, what would be the value of the raw material? Would it be produced at all ? It is true, that the industrial structure rests upon agriculture as the foundation. But what is the value of a foundation, and would it be laid at all, if no superstructure were to be built upon it? It is no disparagement to agriculture that it cannot say to manufacture, "I have no need of thee,” or to the mechanic arts, "I |