Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1872-10-03

2. Water,-A hilly, woody country
naturally abounds in springs and krooks
in rippling streamlets and dashing
cascades. All these are reservoirs of
power-for the most part unused, un-
regarded power, Our waterfalls,
whether natural or artificial, will yet
be employed to createQ sho'd say
transIeD power in the shape of com
pressed air; and this power will in
time, be used at long distances from
the point at which it was pressed into
the service Of man. Especially in re
gion5 like this, where considerable
streamletS often fall a hundred feet in
a mile, will water be made to play an
important part in the creation or utili-
zation Of power for the farmer, The
Hon. William D, Kelley, arguing to a
southern audience the impolicy of
slavery, asserted that dozen men and
dogs often followed for days on the
track Of one lame negro, while water
power equivalent to the muscular
force of a thousand negroes ran to
waste umegarded beside them. We
smile at the folly thus forcibly exposed;
but might not the smile be broadencd
into laugh and turned against our
selves? If we lack the BRAN power to
stop his monstrous waste, | feel sure
that our grandchildren will possess
and exercise it.
3. Steam.-Whethcr steam my or
my not soon be superseded by cleo
tricity or some other natural force, |
connot stop here to consider. | cannot
believe that the power which sends
messages in an instant from Stamboul
to San Francisco will long be found
inadequate or unfit to Tighten the
farmers labor or to increase its pro-
duct. As yet, however, steam is the
only force artificially evolved from
dead, inorganic matter which has been
widely pressed into the service of pro-
dutive industry. Steam forges, ham
mers aud cuts iron; it converts animal
and vegetable tibers into every form
and fashion Of textile fabric; it is to-
day doing more work than all the
artisans and artifcers ON earth could
do without it. Steam is to-day mans
most useful servant; the horse and the
OK do his bidding on a far wider area;
but their relative power is declining,
while that Of steam is still rapidly ad-
vancing. TO dispense with steam
would set us back a long stage on the
road whereby we have advanced from
barbariSm.
But steam has as yet rendered little
direct service to the farmer. 1t should
and might have rendered much. Ami
nal power is not merely slow and in
effective in comparison with this it
labors under the cap tai disadvantage
Of being costly while idly waiting
through weeks and months for the re
turn Of genial weather; whereas a
steam engine no longer needed may
be oiled up and set away under shell
ter, where it need consume nothing
until once moLe needed. If steam
Were as costly as horsepower, this act
would renderit it immensely preferable.
Never striking for higher wages nor
for fewer hours. steam will work un-
ceasingly, uncomplainingly, from Mon
day morning till Saturday night, ask
ing only to be fed and drinking moth
ing stronger than water.
Our harsh, capricious climate, with
its late and early frosts, its long frozen
and then perfectly sodden fields, invi-
tes to the use Of steam have known
Illinois and her neighbors to be visit
ed by rain after rain in springtime, so
that scarcely an acre per township Of
blowing for corn had been effected by
the middle of May, Now the soil
dries, and everything invites to plow-
ing and planting but there is hard y
time to put in half a crop before seed
ing must give way to cultivating, and
the planting area can be no further
enlarged. With steam plows, quadru
pie the present number Of acres may
be fitted to receive the seed in a week;
and so all the risk and loss to which a
rainy season in spring now subjects us
may be ohviated.
OF course, New England will never
more grow all her grain; she can do
better. But that she might advantage
ously grow more grain, and larger
average crops Of 1t, | fully believe.
The chief obstacle to her grain-grow-
ing inheres not in her climate, nor
even in the qualities Of her soil. but in
its vicious topography. An arabic, fer
tile acre or so, with rocky ridge on
one side and a morrass or sodden,
weedy brook-margin on the other, at
tords no scope for the profitable grow
ing Of grain. Our eastern agriculture
is too fragmentary-a thing of shreds
and patches. As | sat beside n New
England born farmer in Illinois, and
looked across his quarter-section of
dry, fertile prairie, mainly under fence,
| asked him How much corn do you
grow annually?" About sixty acres"
. With what help?" "None." What
area do you plant in day?' "Four-
teen acres" 1t would take a man a
week, on average, to plant fourteen
acres hereabout; and then it would
not be so well planted as by the Hi
noisian's seed drill, dropping and Gov
ering two rows as fast as he wanted to
walk.
Now the hilly, swampy, irregular
n