Abraham Lincoln and the Union [62]
settlers 221,000 acres in 1863 and 264,000 in 1864. It was during the war, too, that the great undertaking of the transcontinental railway was begun, partly for military and partly for commercial reasons. In this project, both as a field of labor and as a stimulus to Western settlement, there is also to be found one more device for the relief of the labor situation in the East.
*This Act, which may be regarded as the culmination of the long battle of the Northern dreamers to win "land for the landless," provided that every settler who was, or intended to be, a citizen might secure 180 acres of government land by living on it and cultivating it for five years.
There is no more important phenomenon of the time than the shifting of large masses of population from the East to the West, while the war was in progress. This fact begins to indicate why there was no shortage in the agricultural output. The North suffered acutely from inflation of prices and from a speculative wildness that accompanied the inflation, but it did not suffer from a lack of those things that are produced by the soil--food, timber, metals, and coal. In addition to the reason just mentioned--the search for new occupation by Eastern labor which had been thrown out of employment--three other causes helped to maintain the efficiency of work in the mines, in the forests, and on the farms. These three factors were immigration, the labor of women, and labor-saving machines.
Immigration, naturally, fell off to a certain degree but it did not become altogether negligible. It is probable that 110,000 able-bodied men came into the country while war was in progress--a poor offset to the many hundred thousand who became soldiers, but nevertheless a contribution that counted for something.
Vastly more important, in the work of the North, was the part taken by women. A pathetic detail with which in our own experience the world has again become familiar was the absence of young men throughout most of the North, and the presence of women new to the work in many occupations, especially farming. A single quotation from a home missionary in Iowa tells the whole story:
"I will mention that I met more women driving teams on the road and saw more at work in the fields than men. They seem to have said to their husbands in the language of a favorite song,
'Just take your gun and go; For Ruth can drive the oxen, John, And I can use the hoe!'
"I went first to Clarinda, and the town seemed deserted. Upon inquiry for former friends, the frequent answer was, "In the army." From Hawleyville almost all the thoroughly loyal male inhabitants had gone; and in one township beyond, where I formerly preached, there are but seven men left, and at Quincy, the county seat of Adams County, but five."
Even more important than the change in the personnel of labor were the new machines of the day. During the fifteen years previous to the war American ingenuity had reached a high point. Such inventions as the sewing machine and the horse-reaper date in their practical forms from that period, and both of these helped the North to fight the war. Their further improvement, and the extension of the principles involved to many new forms of machinery, sprang from the pressing need to make up for the loss of men who were drained by the army from the farms and the workshops. It was the horse-reaper, the horse-rake, the horse-thresher that enabled women and boys to work the farms while husbands, fathers, and elder brothers were at the front.
All these causes maintained Northern farming at a high pitch of productivity. This efficiency is implied in some of the figures already quoted, but many others could be cited. For example, in 1859, the total production of wheat for the whole country was 173 million bushels; in 1862, the North alone produced 177 millions; even in 1864, with over a million men under arms, it still produced 160 million bushels.
It must be remembered that the great Northern army produced nothing while it consumed the products of agriculture
*This Act, which may be regarded as the culmination of the long battle of the Northern dreamers to win "land for the landless," provided that every settler who was, or intended to be, a citizen might secure 180 acres of government land by living on it and cultivating it for five years.
There is no more important phenomenon of the time than the shifting of large masses of population from the East to the West, while the war was in progress. This fact begins to indicate why there was no shortage in the agricultural output. The North suffered acutely from inflation of prices and from a speculative wildness that accompanied the inflation, but it did not suffer from a lack of those things that are produced by the soil--food, timber, metals, and coal. In addition to the reason just mentioned--the search for new occupation by Eastern labor which had been thrown out of employment--three other causes helped to maintain the efficiency of work in the mines, in the forests, and on the farms. These three factors were immigration, the labor of women, and labor-saving machines.
Immigration, naturally, fell off to a certain degree but it did not become altogether negligible. It is probable that 110,000 able-bodied men came into the country while war was in progress--a poor offset to the many hundred thousand who became soldiers, but nevertheless a contribution that counted for something.
Vastly more important, in the work of the North, was the part taken by women. A pathetic detail with which in our own experience the world has again become familiar was the absence of young men throughout most of the North, and the presence of women new to the work in many occupations, especially farming. A single quotation from a home missionary in Iowa tells the whole story:
"I will mention that I met more women driving teams on the road and saw more at work in the fields than men. They seem to have said to their husbands in the language of a favorite song,
'Just take your gun and go; For Ruth can drive the oxen, John, And I can use the hoe!'
"I went first to Clarinda, and the town seemed deserted. Upon inquiry for former friends, the frequent answer was, "In the army." From Hawleyville almost all the thoroughly loyal male inhabitants had gone; and in one township beyond, where I formerly preached, there are but seven men left, and at Quincy, the county seat of Adams County, but five."
Even more important than the change in the personnel of labor were the new machines of the day. During the fifteen years previous to the war American ingenuity had reached a high point. Such inventions as the sewing machine and the horse-reaper date in their practical forms from that period, and both of these helped the North to fight the war. Their further improvement, and the extension of the principles involved to many new forms of machinery, sprang from the pressing need to make up for the loss of men who were drained by the army from the farms and the workshops. It was the horse-reaper, the horse-rake, the horse-thresher that enabled women and boys to work the farms while husbands, fathers, and elder brothers were at the front.
All these causes maintained Northern farming at a high pitch of productivity. This efficiency is implied in some of the figures already quoted, but many others could be cited. For example, in 1859, the total production of wheat for the whole country was 173 million bushels; in 1862, the North alone produced 177 millions; even in 1864, with over a million men under arms, it still produced 160 million bushels.
It must be remembered that the great Northern army produced nothing while it consumed the products of agriculture