NUMBER 31
LABOUR, CONTINUED.
Those tied by habit to the rotation of corn, wheat and pasture, or the three shift system, object to the enclosing and four shift system, “that having labour adequate to the tilling one third of their arable land, a portion of it would be unemployed, by restricting this labour to the cultivation of a fourth only.” The rotation of corn, wheat and clover for two years, without being cut or grazed, need only be confronted with its rival course, to satisfy the reader, that under the latter system, the fourth will soon overtake the third in product, and at length infinitely exceed it. The profit of making greater crops from less land is visible at once. The same crop from a fourth may produce profit, and yet a loss from a third. If 120 acres of poor land produce 120 barrels of corn, and the expences of cultivation amount to a barrel an acre, there is no profit; but if 90 acres of the same land are improved by inclosing, so as to produce 120 barrels, there will be a profit of 30 barrels. This principle equally applies to every case of an existing profit under the three shift system, because whatever it may be, it is greatly increased by obtaining an equal crop by cultivating less land.
The error of making the mode of cultivation subservient to fluctuating labour, instead of adapting the labour to permanent land, however egregious, cannot properly be termed vulgar, because it is common to men of the best,
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as well as to those of the meanest understandings. However glaring it is, it really constitutes the most stubborn argument in favor of using labour to kill rather rather than to improve land; and though some readers may think it idle to controvert a mistake, apparently not within the scope of human weakness to commit, the greater number, will I fear, consider the application of labor to the improvement, rather than to the impoverishment of land, as far more ridiculous. The collision between these opinions, will excuse the matter of this number, though it may seem trite to some and visionary to others.
An application of labour to land, which daily diminishes the fertility of the land, considered in a national light, is obviously a national evil; and a habit from which such boundless or wide ruin and depopulation must ensue, supposing it to be general, seems incapable of deserving the approbation of virtue, or the concurrence of selfishness. If the employment of labour in the course of corn, wheat and pasture, produces a regular impoverishment of the soil, the practice falls within the scope of this observation.
It is equally at enmity with the purest devolution of self-interest, which ever chilled the human heart. This devotion pants for compound or increasing not for decreasing interest; and beholds with horror a diminution of principal. Our three shift system gradually destroys the principal, land, and gradually diminishes the interest crop. If the labour increases as in the case of slaves, the effect is not to enrich, but to impoverish the owner.
Flight is his resource against the poverty he derives from the increase of his slaves. If
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the application of labour to the impoverishment of land, was universal, an emigration to another world, would be the only remedy; if national, it must amount to an abjuration of our country and form of government; if state, to a banishment from our native soil and relations. But this miserable remedy itself will ere long be exhausted, and after an internal struggle for the best birth in a bed of thorns, the discover will be made, that an endeavor in each to feather his own nest, is the only way to procure comfort for all; and that the prosperity of the nation and the happiness of individuals, depend on the improvement of land by a proper application of labour.
But what shall we do with our surplus labour is repeated, if we cease to employ it in killing land? One would think that this doubt could never be entertained, except by a fatalist, who believed that such was the end for which labour was created. The effects of labour are the same in agriculture as in architecture; say more is necessary to build than to destroy; shall we thence also infer, that labor is destined to destroy houses? Where is the difference between destroying houses and destroying the means by which houses are rendered comfortable? The early Kentucky settlers contended, that unless the sugar makers killed the sugar trees, it threw a portion of their labour out of employment, and therefore inferred, that it was one of nature’s wise laws, that labour should kill the sources of sugar. Did they borrow this opinion from our querist, who thinks it wise and natural to employ it in killing the source of bread? If an abundance of labour caused a land killing agriculture system, and its scarcity the reverse, Flanders should be a
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wilderness and Virginia a garden. A great recommendation of the inclosing and four shift system, is the saving of labour it creates in fencing, and in renouncing the culture of exhausted lands, to be applied to improvement. When we come to consider a project for the management of a bread stuff farm, we shall discover full employment for this surplus labour, which the three shift system fears would be idle, if not employed as a land executioner. The raising of manure, covering with clover every spot of land which will bear it, and converting all moist land into meadow, would alone be sponsors for the futility of the apprehension. And yet many other objects of labour must be combined with the four shift and inclosing system, to accelerate and augment the rewards it will bestow. Hay in abundance must be made, crops will be augmented, modes of tillage must be improved, transportation will increase with litter, manure and crops, and gypsum if resorted to, is by no means niggardly in providing employment for labour. — If these observations have not removed the apprehension of ruin, seriously and generously entertained by the disciples of the corn, wheat and pasture rotation, should they change the application of their labour from impoverishing to improving their land, it will still be removed by their superior reflections, if they will be pleased to reflect. They will certainly discover that the danger of wanting employment for their labour, lurks, not in improving but in impoverishing their lands, and that whilst they shudder at an apparition, they are embracing an assassin.
