the beasts and birds of the wilds, and the fish of the rivers, a thousand acres scarcely sufficed for the support of one man. Famines and their attendant diseases were of very frequent occurrence. These people were capable of a political organization, in essentials the prototype of our State and Federal governments. Their "Long Lodge" was a representative congress of its leading people, differing from ours mainly in this, that it gave a separate deliberative chamber for their women in joint council. Yet, with so high a grade of attainment in the policy of commonwealth affairs, they had so little government of the industries necessary to the growth and preservation of a people.

I think we have a clearer and stronger illustration in the authentic history of the Israelites, from the time of Abraham to that of Joseph. These people, through whom we have the law and the prophets, on which Christianity rests, were often compelled to draw their supplies from Egypt, which had a vastly better system of industrial production. The progeny of Jacob sold their inheritance, as Esau sold his, for a mess of pottage. A people that does not acquire and hold the mastery of their native land must go into slavery under those that do. In modern times they become a sort of serfs on their own soil. Their masters are in the foreign market, which fixes the price of both what they have to sell and what they must buy. A slave is one who is the subject of a power outside of himself. Independence is not a national flag or a document; it is a condition of life. It consists of current events of experience, not in written constitutions. The man that pays out all he earns to his employer lives in a rented house, and must travel up and down other people's stairs in the dwelling that he calls his home. Tenancy for a term of years, or for life, is not a fee simple or allodial estate. This is not economic independence.

P. A natural history of the process of substitution in the means of subsistence, even limited to an outline drawing, would interest and instruct one so new to the subject as I am.

T. Forest fruits in their seasons, and animal food from the forests, rivers, and air, are first drawn upon for food supplies. These, beside depending largely upon climatic influences, are secured at a continually increasing toil and vigilance, with a resulting de. crease of yield. In this state of things the "dismal science"

apostles may find abundant proof of their theory. War, pestilence, and famine go even beyond their assigned remedial necessity in the restriction of population.

At a stage considerably advanced above the savage, animal food begins to be supplanted and reduced in temperate climates, and almost displaced in the tropics and semi-tropics, with gains proportionate to the substitutions so effected.

Exclusive animal food, where pasturage and prepared provender must be used, requires ten or twelve acres of land to grow the flesh-diet of one man for one year's consumption. One acre of wheat will support three persons, affording thirty-six times as much sustenance. One acre of potatoes yields the food of nine. persons, equal to one hundred and eight times the nutriment produced from the breadth of land required to raise the equivalent of flesh-meat. In such ratios advanced and diversified agriculture multiplies the means of subsistence by the process of substitution of the abundant for the scarce; and in like degree, though varied in proportion, by all mixtures of these constituents of diet.

In the inferior animals we have a clear demonstration of the economy of a vegetable diet. The lion, tiger, bear, and other carnivorous beasts and birds, multiply slowly; while the vegetable feeders the horse, domestic ox, and buffalo-increase their numbers immensely. These go in herds, while the ravagers of the living creatures around them roam almost alone in the solitudes which they make. The like observation applies to the butchers and the vegetarians among birds.

In apparel, as necessary to life as food itself, and among advanced communities, perhaps equally expensive, the vegetable flax and cotton supplant a vast amount of animal wool and silk. One acre of ground will produce as much of use in textile fabrics and furniture as a hundred will yield in sheep's wool. Of course I do not mean that any one of these substances should totally exclude its correspondent of a different origin; but that the substitution in some cases, and a mixture in others, prodigiously increases the total stock, adapts it to diverse uses, and brings them all more easily within the means of purchase.

P. So far as the mineral kingdom can be a resort from the animal and vegetable, the acts of substitution must extend the benefits of a graded progress, with a cumulative force of product.

T. The course of this process has a curious analogy to the inclined plane on a road-way. It begins or takes its first step by passing from the fruits that grow above the earth and the beasts that roam over it, to cereals that grow from it, and the roots that have their place and nutriment in its bosom. The next advance step is into the bowels of the planet, in which we find stores of wealth-giving materials absolutely inexhaustible; the respective supplies swelling from the transient and deficient, through the abundant and ever-renewing, till they reach the rank of the perpetual and the superabundant.

D. The depth of this series makes one dizzy, as in trying to measure the unfathomable; but tell us, if you can, how such latent potency in the materials of support affects, or can affect, the masses of men in civilized society. Something, much has been gained, but all along the needed, has been much more than was ever realized. However ample the store accumulated and in reserve may be, it is only the realized that counts in actual welfare.

T. To answer your question, how the unquestionable augmentation, already effected and assured in prospect, works for the benefit of those who have no capital but their labor-power, it is safe for the present to suggest that growing abundance must cheapen its subjects in the marts of exchange to all consumers; else what is the meaning of the maxim, "supply and demand," in the philosophy of your favorite authorities?

D. Cheapness is a relative term. It has reference to the state of the purchaser's fund, as well as to the nominal prices of the market.

T. That question involves the distribution of the products of industry among the several contributors concerned. This will be best considered when we come to the investigation of the history and the law of Wages, Profits, and Interest.

It occurs to me now that the operation of the law of substitution would be best exhibited by arranging the subject matters in the juxtapositions of a tabular statement where the eye would help the ear in apprehending it.

P. I have employed my leisure in an effort to arrange the correspondent substances, in advanced uses-the things supplanted

First, from

Second, from the animal

by improved uses of other things, increased in quantity and in cheapness throughout the process of what you call Substitution. I have arranged them in three phases of movement. the animal to the vegetable kingdom. and vegetable kingdoms to the mineral. add a third transition from the animal, through the vegetable and mineral, to that territory of effective forces made tributary to the world's work which scientists call the Imponderables.

And I have ventured to

I submit the list for such consideration and criticism as it invites, premising that I am aware of its defects both in subjects and arrangement.

1st. From the Animal to the Vegetable Kingdom.

From animal food as a chief supply.

To vegetable food more and more largely mixed.

"flax and cotton textiles.

46

skins in sails and cordage.

66

66

"the wooden canoe.

66

paper of rags and vegetable fibre. vegetable oils.

2d. From the Animal and Vegetable to the Mineral Kingdom.

3d. From Animals, Vegetables, and Minerals to the

FROM INFERIOR TO BETTER OF THE SAME KIND.

T. In this last class you have mixed actual achievements with possibilities, which advancement of knowledge and power will turn to certainties of experience; and you leave partially unnoted, while travelling from one kind of substance to another employed in the same use, the constantly advancing substitution of the better for the inferior in the same kind of things. For instance, paper made into bricks, boats, and bags that resist fluids like glass. But the transformations, like the transitions of all substances in modern art, are almost infinite.

I think that the testing of propositions by diagrams, where that is possible, by tabular statements arraying the contrasts and correspondences so as to see the relations of the elements concerned, is sure to unload the student of his prejudices and assumptions, and to stretch him to his proper work of knowing truly and thoroughly what he thinks vaguely or has learned trustingly and inexactly.

P. Do you detect any exceptionable things in my tabular statement?

T. There are probably plenty of them; some of which you will find for yourself every time you revise it. Lord Bacon promised a diagram of the order of the sciences, progressive and successive a sort of table of their substitutions and superventions, but he failed-at least his editors have found nothing yet, either in his publications or manuscripts. So, cheer up, for you also are mortal. Looking out for mistakes in your happiest works, you may correct as you discover them. Since your infancy the accretions of growth have displaced the effete atoms of your physical frame; yet you have grown several inches through