have no need of thee." It is no disparagement to all or any of these that they cannot say to commerce, "we have no need of you." It ennobles all these, that none of them any more than the professions, can say to education "we have no need of thee." As in the natural body, there is a divine harmony running through the whole structure of the body economical. One member cannot suffer without all the other members suffer with it.

In all civilized countries the division of labor and of employments corresponds to the degree of civilization which there prevails. In the production of material wealth in its thousand departments, agriculture, mechanic arts and manufactures, this division of labor results in a vast increase of every kind of production, through time and labor saved, and the means furnished for intellectual, moral, and social improvement.

But again, the division further begets the need of Exchange, and of an extended system of exchanges, for the mutual benefit of the producers; and owing to the different and sometimes distant localities of production, transportation is also necessary. To effect the latter with economy and dispatch, the accumulation and combination of capital has been required.

The true principle of the division of labor is, that inasmuch as all produced values are the results of agriculture and manufactures, commerce ought to take to itself whatever share is on an average a fair remuneration for its service, leaving in the hands of producers a balance far exceeding in amount and value their whole production, providing they were obliged to effect transportion and exchanges themselves. Although the setting up of the mercantile class, reacts upon production, enlarging its volume, and enriching the producers themselves; still, it is an ultimate and fixed fact, which ought to be distinctly understood, that commerce is a charge upon agriculture and manufacture that the whole cost of commercial machinery must withdraw just so much of the gross value produced, from the hands of the producer. If the process be clumsily and expensively performed, he suffers, and is less prosperous. The farmer, therefore, is interested in every improvement of the commercial process which will diminish the expenses of transportation and exchange, as truly as in the improvements in manufacture or in implements, which will diminish the cost of production.

When we look at the vastness and complication of the machinery of commerce, by land and by sea; and the enormous expense of maintaining it, we may well wonder at the miracle,

COMMERCE A CHARGE UPON AGRICULTURE.

23

that the shoulders of agriculture and manufacture are broad enough to sustain, uncrushed and unbent, the whole burden of the charge.

And yet they do sustain it. Not a dollar goes into the treasury of these improvements which is not taken from the produced values of those who are ultimately the mutual parties interested in the exchange, and in the consumption of the commodities transported. The gross values of the producer are diminished, aye, taxed, if you please, to this amount,—and the farmer pays his portion of the tax. But is he oppressed by it? Not unless the process has been fraudulent, because:

1st. In consequence of a reduction in the cost of exchange which commerce secures, his produce is worth more on his farm. 2d. The merchandise which he needs costs less for the same

reason.

3d. Because the commercial agency takes away a smaller portion of his produced values, leaving a larger balance in his hands; he is affected precisely as if his land had become more productive; therefore his real estate rises in value.

We will now look at money as a commercial agent. Gold and silver coin, embodying the two qualities of universal receivability and divisibility at will, has been adopted by common consent and the action of civil governments as the money of the commercial world, and is as distinctly a part of the machinery of commerce, as the railroad or steamboat.

It is the office of the railroad to facilitate and cheapen transportation, and this constitutes its whole value as a railroad; so it is the office of coined money to facilitate and cheapen exchanges, and this constitutes its whole value as money.

Were barter entirely convenient and economical, money would have no office to perform,-no necessity would have suggested its creation-its presence in the business of the world would be without meaning; it would never have been thought of.

When we consider what an enormous sum of money the exchanges of this country require; that the annual charge for this expensive commercial agent is the yearly interest of this sum, with the addition of the annual cost of the coinage, the loss by the wear and tear, by shipwreck and otherwise, we wonder again, are the shoulders of agriculture and manufacture broad enough to sustain the burden of this charge?

They do sustain it, with incalculable advantage and profit to the producer. For the simple reason that money, although

itself an expensive agent, so facilitates and cheapens exchanges, as to relieve agriculture and manufacture from the far greater cost of making these same exchanges by the time and labor consuming processes of barter.

We have seen that agriculture is interested in the prosperity and improvement of all mechanical and manufacturing interests; that agriculture in common with the arts is interested in the prosperity of commerce.

Agriculture, in common with manufacture and commerce, is interested in the prosperity of the professions. Without the agency of these; without the sound social conditions of HEALTH, ORDER and MORALITY, production would be at an end. So much for the economic argument. Above all, it is interested in that agency which terminates not on the physical products, nor yet directly on social conditions, but on the man himself. The raw material of the educator is the young mind, the unformed intellect of the community. This resulting product is the finished man, prepared by varied knowledge and discipline, and by special training, to act well his part as agriculturist, artisan, merchant, capitalist, physician, lawyer, or teacher; useful in the civil state, and in those more exalted relations which concern him as a member of the human family, and a subject of the universal empire of God.

The educator, whether of the school or the press, stands at the point of power, and applies the moving force to the mechanism of human society. His is the highest office in the social economy.

Agriculture is interested in the prosperity and growth of large towns. A town or city is a part of the business machinery of the country. In some agricultural communities there has sprung up a narrow jealousy of the town, grudging its prosperity, tainting legislation by unequal taxation, and a denial of the facilities necessary to healthy development. In the large town the principle of competition is the most active, and furnishes the best check upon monopoly. The interests of town and country are mutual and harmonious.

Lastly, agriculture is interested in the improvement and perfection of its own processes, in the discoveries of science and their applications, in that close union of the intellect of the state with its productive arm, which will finally do away with social distinctions, and leave each individual to stand on his personal merit as a part of the social system.

WORLD.

AGRICULTURE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD.

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CHAPTER III.

AGRICULTURE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD.

"It began to be a question whether Egypt was going to live much longer, when she paid more attention to embalming her grandfathers than she did to inspiring her children."

CIVILIZATION A RELATIVE TERM-WEALTH--WILD WHEAT AND WILD RICE THE DATE MILLET-EGYPTIAN AGRICULTURE AND HORTICULTURE-FLAX CULTURE -GRANARIES MODELS OF OUR ELEVATORS - CONDITION OF THE PEOPLECHINA-CONFUCIUS A TEACHER OF AGRICULTURAL THRIFT-HOW SILK CULTURE HAS BEEN PROMOTED-IMPLEMENTS-SIZE OF FARMS WAGES JAPAN COMPARED WITH GREAT BRITAIN WHEAT CULTURE-RURAL LIFE IN GREECE -XENOPHON A FARMER-HESIOD'S "WORKS AND DAYS"-PUBLIC GARDENS-DECAY-ARISTOTLE THE FATHER OF A RATIONAL POLITY-SLAVERY-ROMEPATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS-SIZE OF FARMS-COMMON PASTURE-TENANTSCATO'S DESCRIPTION OF A STEWARD THE ROME OF TO-DAY.

A COMPLETE history of agriculture has yet to be written. From the traditions of different nations, their works of art, and their literatures, we find abundant evidence that, however splendid the superstructure, the civilization of every nation has rested where it does to-day, upon the toil of millions for their daily bread-the satisfaction of the common wants of humanity.

Whatever may afterward be added to improve, adorn and elevate the social or spiritual condition of man, his relation to the soil remains unchanged; there is the basis of his prosperity. It was given to him "for usufruct alone," not for consumption, and still less for profligate waste. Wherever the obligation to maintain the harmonious balance between organic and inorganic nature has been met, there we find the oldest and most permanent civilizations. Wherever the selfish pursuit of profit, the vile principle "After us the Deluge," has been the ruling motive, the deluge has followed, leaving in its wake a human deterioration which corresponds with the destruction of virgin lands. From the old center and cradle of the race we may trace man as he flies from the arena of his own actions, in Palestine, in Greece, in Italy, in the north of Africa and Spain, leaving behind him soils rendered infertile through the demolition of forests, "thorns and thistles," or the depauperated forms of once noble races of plants. Having reached the western limit, the tide of emigration must ere long return upon its course, to restore and recover the wastes it has created. Indigenous species of animals and plants needlessly extirpated, must be replaced by alien forms, and the balance re-adjusted as far

as a better knowledge of the laws of animal and vegetable life will make such readjustment possible.

Civilization is a relative term. It does not consist in the multiplication or modes of supply of the artificial wants of mankind; it is the development of social order in place of individual independence and savage lawlessness. It is the improvement of the mass through the perfection of its units. This is a common sense view of the subject, and common sense, as Mr. Guizot says, "is the genius of mankind."

Civilization, therefore, determined by the character of the units of the social order, is susceptible of continual progress, and the highest perfection. But it is dependent upon physical agents, chiefly upon climate and soil, which determine the most important conditions of human welfare.

The first step of progress is the accumulation of wealth, which in all regions of the earth is created by labor. The moment man produces more than he consumes, the law of distribution comes into play and we see a movement toward an organization of industry. It does not depend upon race. The same Mongolian and Tartar tribes which, wandering over the steppes and barren lands of Central Asia, never emerge from the rudest condition of pastoral life, because they never accumulate; have risen to the highest civilization whenever they have broken through the mountain ranges and descended into more fertile regions. The wild Arab, whom we know best as the Bedouin of the desert, transplanted to Persia or Spain, left noble architectures behind him, and made valuable contributions to literature and science.

Even the Indian races of the new world, wherever nature permitted the accumulation of the wealth derived from a genial climate and fertile soil, have left, as in Mexico and in Peru, splendid monuments of their advancement in the arts of life. Everywhere the basis is the same; it was rice and wheat culture on one continent, maize on the other.

How many ages were consumed in impressing the stamp of utility upon the products of wild nature it is impossible to tell. Some of the most useful food plants are found in a wild state. Wheat in upper Egypt and the hill country of India; rice of excellent quality, though not identical in species, abounds in the North American lakes.

But the wild wheat is a thin and comparatively miserable