[379]Report of the U.S.A. Commissioner of Agriculture for the year 1867 (Washington, 1868). Quoted by Lafargue: Getreidebau und Getreidehandel in den Vereinigten Staaten in Die Neue Zeit (1885), p. 344. This essay on grain cultivation and the grain trade in the U.S.A. was first published in a Russian periodical in 1883.
[380]‘The three Revenue Acts of June 30, 1864, practically formed one measure, and that probably the greatest measure of taxation which the world has seen.... The Internal Revenue Act was arranged, as Mr. David A. Wells has said, on the principle of the Irishman at Donnybrook Fair: “whenever you see a head, hit it, whenever you see a commodity, tax it”’ (F. W. Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States (New York-London, 1888), pp. 163-4).
[381]Ibid., pp. 166-7.
[382]‘The necessity of the situation, the critical state of the country, the urgent need of revenue, may have justified this haste, which, it is safe to say, is unexampled in the history of civilised countries’ (Taussig, op. cit., p. 168).
[383]Peffer, op. cit., pp. 58 ff.
[384]Ibid., p. 6.
[385]‘Agricultural Competition in North America’ (Die landwirtschaftliche Konkurrenz Nordamerikas) Leipzig, 1887, p. 431.
[386]Lafargue, op. cit., p. 345.
[387]The Thirteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labour (Washington, 1899) tables the advantages of machinery methods over hand methods so far achieved as follows:
| Type of work | Labour time per unit | |||
| Machine | Hand | |||
| hrs. | min. | hrs. | min. | |
| Planting small corn | — | 32·7 | 10 | 55 |
| Harvesting and threshing small corn | 1 | — | 46 | 40 |
| Planting corn | — | 37·5 | 6 | 15 |
| Cutting corn | 3 | 4·5 | 5 | — |
| Shelling corn | — | 3·6 | 66 | 40 |
| Planting cotton | 1 | 3 | 8 | 48 |
| Cultivating cotton | 12 | 5 | 60 | — |
| Mowing grass (scythe v. mower) | 1 | 0·6 | 7 | 20 |
| Harvesting and baling hay | 11 | 3·4 | 35 | 30 |
| Planting potatoes | 1 | 2·5 | 15 | — |
| Planting tomatoes | 1 | 4 | 10 | — |
| Cultivating and harvesting tomatoes | 134 | 5·2 | 324 | 20 |