THE PIONEER OF CIVILIZATION. 21 



We have other and more usual manufacturing interests of 

 which I might speak. We have a large hosiery-mill and 

 dye-works. We have iron-founders whose enterprise and 

 ability enable them to secure large contracts for work out- 

 side the country. We have machinists whose productions 

 have a high reputation. 



But, gentlemen, do not think, because I have occupied so 

 much time in speaking of the manufactures of Waltham, that 

 I have forgotten the object of this meeting ; forgotten the 

 great interests of wliich you stand officially at the head in 

 the State, and forgotten the character of the club, and the 

 business of a large portion of the citizens whom it is my privi- 

 lege to represent. The tiller of the soil came here before the 

 manufacturer. The manufacturer could not have come un- 

 less the farmer had come before him. This is the order in 

 which all lands have been settled, and it will continue to be 

 the order of their settlement in all time to come. In the 

 condensed and brief history of the first steps in civilization 

 contained in that old book that we hold sacred, we are told 

 that after the moral sense of our first parents was awakened, 

 they clothed themselves with leaves. They next made coats 

 of skins, showing that they had mastered the wild beasts. 

 Then Abel became a herdsman, showing that the wild beasts 

 had been tamed. Then we are told that Cain was a tiller of 

 the earth, and was the first that "builded a city." The agri- 

 culturist built the first house erected in our world. That he 

 should do so, was the natural consequence of his business. 

 However rude, whether made of branches of trees or rough 

 stones, the tiller of the soil built the first house and estab- 

 lished the first home. The tiller of the soil built the first 

 house in Waltham. And the towns throughout our country 

 were first settled by men and women who struck into the 

 wilderness, made a clearing, built a house, and put seed into 

 the soil. To-day it is the farmer that pushes westward upon 

 the prairies, makes a settlement, establislies a home, and so 

 extends the area of civilization. The mechanic and manu- 

 facturer follow after. This is the original order. For, turn- 

 ing to that brief history of the first steps of our race in civili- 

 zation again, we find that the mechanic and the manufacturer 

 did not appear until the sixth generation after the farmer 

 had built the "city," in Tubal-Cain, the worker in metals. 



