ing. 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 and manufacture--food,
clothing, arms, ammunition, cannon, wagons, horses, medical stores--at
a rate that might have led a poetical person to imagine the army as
a devouring dragon. Who, in the last analysis, provided all these
supplies? Who paid the soldiers? Who supplemented their meager pay and
supported their families? The people, of course; and they did so both
directly and indirectly. In taxes and loans they paid to the Government
about three thousand mi