" From this fact, as the
representative of a great class of facts, we may safely draw two
conclusions. First, these improvements are the products of learning, the
contribution which learning makes to labor, far exceeding in amount any
tax which the cause of learning, in schools or out, imposes upon labor.
Secondly, we see that a given amount of adult labor upon a farm, with
the help of the improved implements of industry, will accomplish more in
1856, than the same amount of adult labor, with its attendant juvenile
force, could have accomplished in 1826. If we were fully to illustrate
and sustain the latter inference, we should be required to review the
improvements made in other implements of farming, as well as in ploughs.
Their positive pecuniary value, when considered in the aggregate, is too
vast for general belief; and in England alone it must exceed the
anticipated cost of a system of public instruction, say six millions of
pounds, or thirty millions of dollars, per year. But learning, as we
have defined it, has contributed less to farming than to other
departments of labor.
The very existence of manufactures presupposes the existence of
learning. There is no branch of manufactures without its appropriate
machine; and every machine is the product of mind, enlarged and
disciplined by some sort of culture. The steam engine, the
spinning-jenny, the loom, the cotton-gin, are notable instances of the
advantages derived by manufacturing industry from the prevalence of
learning.
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