Muscatine weekly journal. [volume] (Muscatine, Iowa) 185?-1890, 1858-06-12
From the Atlantic Monthly.
wh.t are We Ooinr 10 makei

what arc We Going to Make
First, we are going to finish up, and carry
out into all desirable species, our great idea
of an iron slave, the illustrious Man Friday
Of our modern civilization. Whether we
put water, air, or ether into his aorta, as
the medium Of converting heat into force,
we shall at last have safe subject, availa-
BILE for all sorts of drudgery, that will do the
work of man without eating more than
half as much weight of coal as man eats
of bread and meat. Next, carrying into all
departments of human industry, in its per-
feet development, this new creature, which
has already, as mere infant, made so stu
pendous change in some of them, we shall
make the human millions oil masters, from
being nearly oil slaves. We shall make
both idleness and poverty nearly impossible.
Human labor, as a general thing, is posi-
tive pleasure only when the hand and brain
work in concert. Hence, the more you in
crease we'll devised and efficient machinery,
which requires and rewards intelligent over
sight and skillfull direction, the more you
increase the love Of labor. We have already
manufacturing communities SO we'll supplied
with tasks for brains and hands, that every
body works, or would do so but for Circe
and her seductive hollow-ware. We are
beginning to push machinery into agricul-
ture, where it will have still greater scope.
With the means we now have, in the enor-
meusiy increased production Of iron, our
almost 0mnipresent and omnipotent ma
chinery, our railroads leading everywhere,
another century, or perhaps half of it, will
see every arabic rood Of the earth, and every
rood that can be made arabic, ploughed,
sowed, and the crops harvested by iron
horses, iron oxen, or iron men, under the
free and intelligent supervision of people
who know how to feed, drive, doctor, and
make the most of them.
One island, which would hardly be missed
from the map of the world, so small that it's
rivers all fall into the sea mere brooks, with
not more than one thirteenth as much coal
as we have in the United States, and perhaps
not one hundredth as much iron ore, by the
use of steam driven machinery produces as
much iron and perhaps weaves as much cloth
yearly as all the rest of the world. If it
does not the latter, it would do it, if it could
find enough of the raw material and paying
customers. But agriculture, which supplies
the raw material, though it is the first and
most universal form Of human labor, lags
behind the worlds present manufacturing
power. One cause Of the late, and perhaps
Of the previous commercial revulsion, was
this disproportion. Themore rapid enlarge
ment Of manufacturing industry, multiplied
in power by its machinery, caused the raw
material to rise in price and the manufac-
tured article to fall, till the operations could
not be supported from the profits at the same
time that contracts were fulfilled with capi-
talists. Manufactures must pause till agri
culture overtakes Steam machinery applied
to agriculture is the only thing that can
correct this disproportion, and this is what
we are going to make. The world is not to
be much longer dependent for its cotton on
the compulsory labor of the Dark Ages, nor
for its flax and corn on blistered free hands
or overworked cattle. The laborer, in either
section of our country, will be transformed
into an ingenious gentleman or lady, COM
fortably mounted OH a migratory steam cul-
tivator to direct its gigantic energies,-or,
at least, occasionally SO occupied. Under
this system, it must be plain enough, to all
persons prophetieally inclined, that the
Northern valleys will greatly multiply their
products, while the Southern cotton-6 fields
will whiten with heavier crops than human
chattelism ever produced, and the mountains
of both latitudes, now hardly notched with
will rolldown the wool of sheep
in clouds @