198 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



with a new sense, an ambition for the precedence of our nation in 

 the industrial arts. Among these arts, those of the textile indus- 

 try take the first rank. Tliey contribute most to the comfort of 

 the people, and to one of the strongest passions of man, — the love 

 of personal adornment ; for, if there is one thought which pre- 

 dominates in a city population, it is that of the selection and 

 preparation of clothing. In the great cities, it is the trade in 

 textiles which throngs the thoroughfares, makes the streets gay 

 with colored tissues, builds palatial warehouses, creates the highest 

 rents, and secures the largest fortunes to the great distributors. 

 The textile industrj^ above all others, displays the command of 

 man over the forces of nature. Mr. Garsed, of Philadelphia, who 

 manufactures in every day of ten hours thirty-three thousand 

 miles of cotton thread, with the expenditure of force derived from 

 seven tons of coal, has shown by careful calculation that, if it 

 were possible for such quality of thread to be made by hand, it 

 would require the labor of seventy thousand women to accomplish 

 this work in the same time. The command of the improved tex- 

 tile manufacture increases the power of the factory operative over 

 the hand-workman more than a thousand-fold. And this is the 

 chief source of the supremacy of the manufacturing nations. 

 The profit on the manufacture of cotton in Great Britain during 

 the last fifty years has exceeded five thousand million dollars. 

 Says Mr. Porter: "It is to the spinning-jenny and the steam- 

 engine that we must look as having been the true moving powers 

 of our fleets and armies, and the chief support also of a long- 

 continued agricultural prosperity." 



To come nearer home, the textile industry is the chief means of 

 diversifying the occupations in the older States, of removing sur- 

 plus population from worn-out lands, and of equalizing, by the 

 aid of machinery, the weak muscles of more than half of our 

 working population — the women — with those of men. It is shown 

 by the first volume of the census returns of the State of Massa- 

 chusetts, just published, that this State, having the most dense 

 population of any State in the Union, and ranking seventh in 

 actual numbers, in 1875 employed in the textile manufactures 

 85,287 persons, and, if we add those engaged in the allied clothing 

 manufacture, 28,935, — a total of 114,222 ; while the numbers em- 

 ployed in agriculture, the care of animals, and the fisheries is but 

 81,156. The whole number employed in all manufactures and 

 other mechanical industries was 316,450. The products of manu- 



