American Agriculture [pp. 249-264]

AMERICAN A4 GRICUL T URE.
tion and machinery unused as there is used; and that it is un —
used solely in consequence of the ignorance and incompetency
of the work-people." This remark, which is perfectly true of
England, and the force of which would have to be multiplied
fourfold in application to the peasantry of France or Austria,.
utterly fails of significance if applied to the United States. It
is because mechanical insight and aptitude, in the degree respecting which the term, mechanical genius, may properly be used,
are found throughout the mass of the American people that
these products of invention and skill have been made of service on petty farms all over our land, and in the most remote
districts wherever the divine rage of the pedler has carried
him. Lack of mechanical insight and aptitude, in the full degree
requisite for the economical use and care of delicate and complicated machinery, is almost unknown among our native northern,
people. Not one in ten but has the mechanical sense and skill
necessary for the purpose.
But it has not been through the invention and wide application of agricultural machinery alone that the peculiar and extraordinary mechanical genius of our people has increased our
national capacity for agricultural productions. In what we may
call the daily commonplace use of this faculty, throughout what
may termed the pioneer period and, in a diminishing degree,
through each successive stage of settlement and industrial
development, the American farmer has derived from this sourcean advantage beyond estimation in dealing with the perpetually
varying exigencies of the occupation and cultivation of thesoil.
Perhaps we cannot better illustrate this than by referring to:
a recent exhibition of our national activity in another field.
When the war of the rebellion broke out no one supposed
that the American armies, hastily raised and commanded by
men tried only in civil affairs, were to give lessons to the engineers of Europe. Yet, after our war had been going on about
two years, it came to be apprehended that a new force had been
introduced into warfare, causing an almost total revolution in
field operations. The soldiers of the Union and Confederate
armies, left almost to themselves in the matter, had gradually
but rapidly developed a system of field intrenchments the like;
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