Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/386

372 society, and necessarily of all that society contains and accomplishes, is a sufficiently commonplace statement, but it is one of the great facts which must never be overlooked. Agriculture not only furnishes the great mass of materials in the transformation and distribution of which numerous classes of society are occupied, but it furnishes the materials out of which human beings themselves are made. The dust of the earth, and the gases of the air, under the magical enchantment of the forces of the universe, are transformed into the substance of life, and the farmers are the superintending priests of the marvelous and mystical change. This continent is destined to feed and to clothe not only its own increasing millions of human beings, but other and numerous millions of people in distant parts of the earth. One of the first great problems, therefore, which press for solution in regard to the future of this country, is that of transportation for the distribution of products to which commercial exchanges give rise. Mr. Ruggles, hence, takes up the question first of all from the point of view of physical geography, or the construction of the continent, by which all possibilities of movement are primarily determined. His presentation of the resources of the country is not made in mere alphabetical order, as in the official census, but topographically by their proximity to oceans, rivers, lakes, and other facilities of transportation. In accordance with this idea, he cuts up the country into seven great districts, which embrace: I. The New England States; II. The Middle Atlantic States; III. The interior States north of the Ohio, and on the Upper Lakes and Upper Mississippi; IV. The Southern Atlantic States; V. The Southwestern States south of the Ohio and on the Gulf of Mexico; VI. The States on the Pacific and adjacent Territories; and VII. The Territories in and east of the Rocky Mountains.

All the products of agriculture in each of the States and Territories are given in detail, and the rates of increase are also presented by showing the amount of each at the end of the three decades closing with 1850, 1860, and 1870. The whole is then considered with reference to the racial diversities of our population, or by "nationalities." We are thus enabled to compare the different States and Territories, side by side, in reference to the amounts and rates of change of their total population, and the various classes of the population, the amount of land in cultivation, the cash value of farms, and its ratio of increase; the kind of products in each locality, and the profits that arise from them; the yearly product of farms, the agricultural capital per head, and average annual income per head of the Germans, Irish, English, Scotch, Swedes, and natives of the United States.

The agricultural population of the American Union was, in 1870, 5,922,741, and had created and acquired a property in agricultural wealth valued at $11,124,985,747, showing an average value of $1,878 per head, yielding a net yearly income of $360, or nearly $1 per day. Ten States, in 1870, produced more than 21,000,000 tons avoirdupois of cereals, and will probably produce, at the end of the century, 40,000,000 or 50,000,000 of tons annually.

These gross results are sufficiently impressive, but the value of Mr. Ruggles's statement is not in his striking array of aggregates, but in that marvelous analysis by which the discriminations are carried down to the utmost details, so as to bring out the conditions, chances, probabilities, and possibilities of individuals. The Frenchman, or the Dane, who wishes to emigrate to this country, by consulting this pamphlet, may inform himself of the condition of his own class of people, where they go, what they do, and how they have got on in the new country. And so any person in Europe, of special aptitudes and industry, desiring to emigrate, may learn where that particular kind of industry is most practised and most profitable.

But, while this pamphlet is of inestimable value from a practical point of view, and ought to be scattered by millions in Europe, it is no less interesting and important as a contribution of data to political philosophy. The highest form of science is quantitative. We must not only know the fact, but measure it, that is, know it exactly. Until this is done, principles cannot be deduced so as to serve for valuable guidance. Careful statistics are quantitative data for sound social reasoning.