Then the daily walk through the fields becomes a daily curse; the very lark that springs from the corn reminds him that it is all sold as it stands; the yoke of oxen carrying the clover to the barn suggests that the whole yield of the dairy belongs to a creditor.

Gloomy, morose, despairing, the man returns home.
It is natural that he should become a stranger to his farm, should seek to escape from painful thoughts in change of scene, and his absence precipitates his downfall.

The one thing that might yet save him, a complete surrender of himself to his avocations, is become intolerable.
Woe, threefold woe, to the landed proprietor who has precipitately invoked the black art of steam to settle on his land, in order to educe from it energies which it does not possess! The heaviest curse that mortal man can know has fallen upon him.

He not only becomes weaker himself, but he deteriorates all those whom he takes into his service.
All that still remains to him is torn to fragments by the rotation of the wheels he has madly introduced; his oxen and his horses are worn out by the heavy demands the factory makes upon them; his worthy farm-servants are transformed into a dirty, hungry proletariat.

Where once the necessary work at least was obediently performed, contention, cheating, and opposition prevail.