1 Essays 37 
For one artisan, or merchant, I suppose, we have at 
least one hundred farmers, by far the greatest part 
cultivators of their own fertile lands, from whence 
many of them draw, not only the food necessary for 
their subsistence, but the materials of their clothing, 
so as to need very few foreign supplies; while they 
have a surplus of productions to dispose of, whereby 
wealth is gradually accumulated. Such has been the 
goodness of Divine Providence to these regions, and 
so favorable the climate, that, since the three or four 
years of hardship in the first settlement of our 
fathers here, a famine or scarcity has never been 
heard of amongst us; on the contrary, though some 
years may have been more and others less plentiful, 
there has always been provision enough for ourselves, 
and a quantity to spare for exportation. And al- 
though the crops of last year were generally good, 
never was the farmer better paid for the part he can 
spare commerce, as the published price-currents 
abundantly testify. The lands he possesses are also 
continually rising in value with the increase of popu- 
lation; and, on the whole, he is enabled to give such 
good wages to those who work for him, that all who 
are acquainted with the old world must agree, that 
in no part of it are the laboring poor so generally 
well fed, well clothed, well lodged, and well paid, as 
in the United States of America. 
If we enter the cities, we find that since the Revo- 
lution the owners of houses and lots of ground have 
had their interest vastly augmented in value; rents 
have risen to an astonishing height, and thence 
7841 Ih