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pointed, by hardships and toil; never to be remitted until the end was 

 gained. 



The mechanic ai-ts and husbandry have gone on together, hand in 

 hand, and together they have subdued, the eai-th and made it what we see it 

 to-day. The inhabitants of a new State like ours can better appreciate 

 the triumphs of industry than those who in the older States come into 

 being and find every thing prepared and perfected. But even those who 

 conquer the wilderness now, can but imperfectly conceive of the condi- 

 tion of the first men, who, as I have said, took hold of the world with 

 their bare hands. We are all debtors to the past, and long since have they 

 been buried, and their history lost, to whom we owe the knowledge, the 

 resources, and the skill which make us what we are. 



He who first used the plough, made a greater advance than he who 

 first used the steam engine ; and he who first made the white and luscious 

 loaf from the "fat kidneys of wheat" added more to human civilization 

 and comfort than he who invented the silk-loom or spinning-jenny. But 

 see how the world has advanced by the united efforts of the mechanic 

 arts and husbandry ! Industry, God's gi-eat and glorious minister on 

 earth, by these two has renewed the fixce of the earth. How wonder- 

 ful, how glorious this univei-sal and ceaseless industry which fills the 

 earth with good things ! See what the world has grown up to by work ! 

 Think of the world at first as a Avild rude world — all forest and desert ; 

 without harvest fields, without human dwellings, without roads, without 

 mechanic arts, without husbandry ; with no bridges over the streams, no 

 ships upon the waters, no commerce, all the metals sleeping in the deep 

 dark mines, and the forces of nature unrevealed, or revealed only to ter- 

 rify ; and man the appointed lord of the world standing here with only 

 his bai-e hands. 



Look at the world to-day — the earth is covered with harvest fields, 

 orchards and vineyards ; the earth is studded with human dwellings in 

 hamlets, villages and proud cities; the earth is coursed with roads, its 

 streams are crossed by bridges ; rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans are cov- 

 ered with fleets ; the mines are giving up untold treasures of coal and 

 iron and copper, and silver and gold ; innumerable manufactories are 

 toiling day and night with the power of water and wind and steam to 

 produce every variety of fabric for comfort and elegance ; and thus the 

 earth is filled with all useful and precious things, so that he who is bore 



