In Lieu of Labor. Editorial [pp. 69-83]

IN LIEU OF LABOR.
absence of any knowledge or skill of our own, miust be accepted as
a tirue test of the economy and the simplicity in the u e of, and
the advantages derived from, the many valuable and reliable machines for the multiplication of man-power, which the inventive
genius of the country has perfected dtiring the last decade.
Without encutmbering this article with the statistics (which can
be found in the second volumie of this series of the REVIEW), we
will simply state, that the increase in the agricultural products of
any of the Western States-Illinois, for example-is so out of
proportion to the increase in farming population., that no other
reasonable explanation is afforded than that found in the universal
demand for, and use of laboi -saving implements. A machine costing five hundred dollars, and doing the work of twenty men, is
just so much a saving as the difference betweenl the interest on
the cost of the machine and its wear and tear, and the annual
wages of the twenty men, less the time of the one or two hands
necessary to its guidance. All over the North and West, laborsaving tools are eagerly sought after, and inventors offering real
improvements, rapidly amass prodigious fortunes, a sure proof by
the way, that the farmer finds it profitable to buy and use such
imnplements. For the cultivation of cereals, it would setm that
labor-saving machinery had reached the outside limits of inventive genius, and as the South is now devoting much more attention than formerly to this class of crops, it is to be hoped that
our intelligent planters will inaugurate a new era by the firee use
of such improved implements as we shall, from time to time,
bring to his notice. During the past month we have visited
many parts of New York, and watched with interest the harvesting of a portion of the wheat and hay crops, and we do not hesitate to admit, that the celerity with which the work was acconplished by the aid of horse-power reapers, rakes, etc., filled us
with )-profound astonishment and admiration. To this particular
branch of the subject we shall have occasion to revert in a future
article.
But the great staple of the South, and that upon which, after
all, she must depend for recuperative resources in those States
adapted to its production, is cotton. It enriched her in the past,
it will be to her a source of wealth in the future. In nearly all
the territory comprised in the Southerni States, all the elements
most favorable to its growth in unequalled perfection and yield
are admirably combined. A soil naturally rich in the constituents
of the cotton plant, and easily kept in the best producing condition by proper culture and the judicious use of such well-known
fertilizers as will.restore those elements annually drawn from it
by vegetation; a climate warm and humid, in which the plant
luxuriates, and which gives to the fibre that length, strength and
those superior spinning qualities for which American cotton is so
famous; a long, season of vegetation giving the plant time to
attain its utmost development, to bud and ripen again and again
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