and caused a city to spring from its bosom. But it is not so. Your prosperous town is but another monument to the wisdom and patriotism of our fathers. It has grown up on the basis of the national independence. But for the deed which was done on the FOURTH OF JULY, 1776, your streets and squares would still be the sandy plain which nature made them.

NOTE.

SEE PAGE 64.

THE history of our manufacturing establishments, for the twenty years that have elapsed since the foregoing address was delivered, has furnished ample confirmation of the general principles advanced in it. The "Lowell Offering," a journal conducted by the female operatives of that city, has been justly regarded, in this country and in Europe, as a production of the highest interest, both literary and moral. A considerable portion of it was reprinted in London, under the significant title of "Mind among the Spindles."

While these sheets are passing through the press, a letter has appeared in the newspapers, giving so graphic a description of the formation of a New England manufacturing village, that I am tempted to quote a portion of it, as an instructive commentary upon the views which I have taken in the preceding pages. It is dated Clintonville, Mass., February 4, 1850, and signed C. W. Blanchard.

"Allow me," says the writer, "to give a sketch of the rise, or, rather, creation, of one of these villages - the one I now live in.

"About a dozen years ago, in an adjoining town, a young man, about twenty years of age, got it in his head that he could make a power loom for weaving coach lace. He had no money; but his brother, a year or two older, who was an operative in a small factory in the neighborhood, had accumulated a few hundred dollars, and, having full faith in his brother's genius, lent his assistance. The young man succeeded with his loom. People came to look at it, and approved it. Boston merchants and capitalists came and saw that it would pay; and they took stock in it. The young man, encouraged by success, and having his faculties sharpened by exercise, went to work upon a loom for weaving figured counterpanes. This succeeded also. Next he tried his hand at an ingrain carpet loom. That went to Lowell, and, consequently, did not help to build up this place, (except inasmuch as it increased confidence in his abilities,) although it is making employment for a thousand persons there. Afterwards he got up a gingham loom, which was equally successful. Well, he determined that his machines should be operated here. Capital was ready to pay the bills, for it saw a prospect of large returns; and this man and his brother, the operative, went to work. They built a machine shop, in

order that their work might be done under their own inspection. Then they built machinery, and put up mills; and, within the last six years, nearly two millions have been invested here under their direction. A village of three thousand inhabitants has sprung up in the midst of what was, eight years ago, woods and barren sheep pastures. But how?

"As soon as it was known that work was to be done here, and money paid for it, Yankee enterprise pricks up its ears and starts. The carpenters, bricklayers, stone masons, iron founders, machinists, flock in. In their train follow tailors, shoemakers, butchers, bakers, and shopkeepers. Some are young and poor, just commencing business; others are older, and have got a thousand or two of dollars. But they can do better here than at home. Those who have children of a suitable age put them at work in the mills, as places occur for them, a portion of the year. Then the farmers all about the neighborhood the citizens who do not come themselves - the doctors, lawyers, and ministers, even- find their girls and boys have got the factory fever. The wages are so good, and paid every four or five weeks, too; sisters, cousins, acquaintances are going; - if they should n't happen to like, they can come home again; in short, they must go to the factory, and will! Occasionally, some of the parents, who are not getting along quite as well as they wish, come over to see what the prospect is. They find it's handy to meetin',' (we have three or four churches ;) schoolin's so much better 'n 't is up our way,' (we have five or six schools, primary, grammar, and high,) that they determine they will move to the factory village and take a boarding-house, so as to be with their children, and enjoy the advantages of a larger community. The persons who came first, meantime, are getting rich, and men of note. They are being elected representatives, selectmen, or filling other respectable stations; but they see no impropriety in their children spending a portion of their time in the factory. They send them to school three, six, or nine months in the year, and the remainder of the time keep them at work. The young folks much prefer the mill to the work about house at home. Their brothers, cousins, lovers, friends, or acquaintances are their overseers; and their fellowoperatives are of the same character. And thus our factory village springs up, and thus its mills are filled, - a large proportion of the operatives, however, always belonging to homes in the neighboring towns or states, whence they come to spend a year or two in the mill, and then return to marry some early acquaintance, or, marrying at the village, establish themselves in a new home."

AMERICAN MANUFACTURES.*

MR PRESIDENT, AND

GENTLEMEN OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE:

YOUR annual fair has again presented the public with a most gratifying spectacle. We have passed in review the numerous specimens of the useful arts collected in your exhibition, and have seen the high degree of perfection to which the mechanical ingenuity of the country has been brought. Much that is required for the comfort or convenience of man, -the implements of his various pursuits; much that is admirably adapted to save labor, economize time, and increase production; and much which, rising above the physical wants and services of our nature, is connected with the refined and elegant arts of life, -is arranged in beautiful order in your hall. We have contemplated and admired the display; and, more than all, we have reflected with pride and pleasure that it is all the production of our neighbors and fellow-citizens, whose intelligent explanations have added not a little to the interest of the exhibition.

Let us pause for a moment upon this interesting spectacle. Of what are these curious machines, instruments, and fabrics composed? They are wrought from the lifeless elements that surround us, - from the inanimate growth of the forest or the field, from the shapeless masses of the quarry and the mine, and from the spoils of the inferior animals, — iron, clay, wood, leather, cotton, wool; - dull, unorganized matter. It is this which has been fashioned into machinery and

Address delivered before the American Institute of the city of New York, at their fourth annual fair, October 14, 1831.

enginery, and into various fabrics of ornament and use, which seem but little inferior to the mysterious organization of the living muscle, limbs, and skin.

And whence are the power and skill that have produced this new creation? What exalted spirit has endowed the lifeless stocks and stones with these wonderful properties? Who has gathered together the dry, opaque sand and alkali, and transformed them into the beautiful medium which excludes the air and admits the light; and cut and polished them into an artificial eye, which never aches nor grows dim; which penetrates millions and millions of miles beyond the natural vision into the depths of the heavens, and, on the other hand, reveals the existence of whole orders of animated beings, that are born, and live, and die within a drop of dew? What magician has touched the fibres of the cotton plant, the fleece of the sheep, the web of an unsightly worm, and converted them into the most beautiful and useful tissues; and who, out of a few beams of wood, and bars of iron, and pounds of lead, has constructed the all-powerful engine, that diffuses knowledge over the earth; and speaks with a voice which is heard beyond mountains and oceans, and the lapse of ages?

The

This magician, this exalted spirit, this (may I say it without irreverence,) this creator is man; man, operating not with mystic power and fabled arts, but with the talents skilfully cultivated, with which he himself-fashioned as he is from the dust beneath his feet-is endowed by his Creator. philosopher's stone, which has converted these lifeless substances into food and clothing, or the instruments of procuring them, the alchemy, which has transformed these rough and discordant elements into the comforts of human life, is the skill of rational man.

But how is this skill obtained? A hundred or two of miles from this spot, within the limits of the state of New York, may still be seen remnants of a branch of the family of man, -once covering, with a thin and needy population, this entire continent; possessed of all the powers which belong to the human race, but without any of the improvements