Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1877 — Production and Population. [ARTICLE]

Production and Population.

Ninety cotton operatives, with an average food-purchasing power each of S3OO (increased from S2OO since 1838 by increase of wages), will now purchase and consume farm products, or their equivalents, to' the aggregate value of $27,000 per annum; requiring the present labor of 135 farmers, producing S2OO per annum through improved machinery and processes (as compared with SIOO in 1838) over and above the subsistence of themselves and families. The ratio of industrial or economic equilibrium between cottrn-cloth producers and the producers of other commodities essential to a comfortable livelihood in the United States in 1876 was therefore approximately as 90 to 135; or, in other words, the labor of 225 persons is as effective in 1876 in meeting the demands of the country for cloth and food products as was tne labor of 691 persons in effecting similar results in 1838; and, as a consequence of this change in the power of production, the labor of 466 other persons have, within this time and within the special industrial sphere under investigation, been rendered unnecessary ; and they have been compelled to enter into relations with new wants and hew capabilities of purchase in order to find employment. Results similar, and possibly even more striking, are afforded by the analysis of other leading American industries. Thus, in the manufacture of boots and shoes, three met working with machinery can do at present what, prior to 1860, required the labor of six men to effect, while the individual or per capita consumption of boots and shoes in the United States has probably been more uniform during the same period than is the case with almost any other commodity. At a convention of the stove trade last year (1876) in St. Louis, it was also officially reported that under what may be called a healthy trade there was at least 33 per cent, greater present capacity for making stoves in the United States than the country requires; and that three men now, with the aid of machinery, can produce as many stoves as six men unaided could have done in 1860. In the manufacture of straw goods, 300 hands in one of the largest factories in New England do more with the sewing-ma-chine than what a comparatively few years ago required 1,000 to effect when sewing of the braid was done by hand; and the steam-press turns off four hats to the minute, in place of the old rate of one hat to four minutes. Similar results, derived from consideration of our industries as a whole, are also given in the last national census, which shows that, while the increase in population in the United States from 1860 to 1870 was less product of our so-called manufacturing industries during the same period, measured in kind, was 52 per cent., or near 30 per cent, in excess of the gain in population.— David A. Wells, in North American Review,