Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/509

Rh into bread, the bread must be carried to the consumer. All these processes require labor in countless forms in the production of machinery, buildings, tools, packages, and transportation. The bale of cotton must be packed, carried to and fro, spun, woven, and again carried to and fro. So of every product of the earth, without exception. All industry and all commerce are concerned in changing the forms and places of the products of agriculture, forestry, mines, and fisheries.

John Stuart Mill (“Political Economy,” Book I, Chapter II) asks why the grinding of corn should be considered a manufacturing employment, while the thrashing of it is agricultural. The only reason, he says, is that thrashing is usually done on the farm, while the grinding is done at a mill. Butter-making is counted an agricultural employment if it is done on the farm, but a manufacturing employment if it is done at a creamery. But it is the making of the butter, and not the place of making, that is the essential thing. Carry your imagination along all the ramifications of human industry to its farthest confines, and where can you find anything that is not analogous to the two related employments of the milk-maid and the butter-maker? Mr. Mill shows that the labor of astronomers, who help the sailor to find his way by the shortest paths over seas, carrying the farmer's products, is productive labor, and that whether it be called agricultural or not is of no importance to the sum total of the world's wealth. To draw a distinction, therefore, between agriculture and the manipulation and transportation of its products, as a source of wealth and taxes, is false reasoning.

Taxes must be apportioned among political units. The State of Connecticut is one such unit, and I choose this for present consideration because there has been a recent official examination of the profits of agriculture in that State, which enables us to see what economic rent amounts to in one of the most industrious and prosperous communities in the Union. It is embraced in the “Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the year 1889.” Mr. Hotchkiss, the commissioner, has sought to make out as good a case for agriculture as possible, to show that it is not in a distressed condition, or not necessarily so. What is the showing of economic rent in Connecticut?

Six hundred and ninety-three farms were visited. Three hundred and fourteen report average profits of $362.88. Three hundred and seventy-eight report an average loss of $268.59. One reports neither loss nor gain. In this calculation the farmer's family support was reckoned as part of the farm expenses, which Mr. Hotchkiss thinks is improper, since, in reckoning the gains of other trades, it is customary to deal only with the profits and losses of the business by itself. Making this correction, he