What constitutes the population of a land?
Merely the numberable packages of meat and bones in it called by courtesy men and women?
Shall a million ounces of brass and a million ounces of gold be held to be of the same value?
Take a truer standard: the measure of a man's contributing capacity to his time and his people--the work he can do--and then number the population of this country to-day, as multiplied by what a man can now do, more than his grandfather could do.

By this standard of measurement, this nation, two or three generations ago, consisted of mere cripples, paralytics, dead men, as compared with the men of to-day.

In 1840 our population was 17,000,000.

By way of rude but striking illustration, let us consider, for argument's sake, that four of these millions consisted of aged people, little children, and other incapables, and that the remaining 13,000,000 were divided and employed as follows: 2,000,000 as ginners of cotton.
6,000,000 (women) as stocking-knitters.
2,000,000 (women) as thread-spinners.
500,000 as screw makers.
400,000 as reapers, binders, etc.
1,000,000 as corn shellers.
40,000 as weavers.
1,000 as stitchers of shoe soles.
Now the deductions which I am going to append to these figures may sound extravagant, but they are not.

I take them from Miscellaneous Documents No.