ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 23 



Our other principal manufacturing establishment is the 

 cotton-gin factory. Gins have been made in this place and 

 in the adjoining town of East Bridge water for many years; 

 and as their manufacture in this State has been confined 

 chiefly to this immediate vicinity, a brief history of the 

 origin of this enterprise may be interesting. 



About seventy-five years ago Mr. Eleazer Carver, one of 

 our townsmen (now deceased), when a young man, started 

 for the West and South on a tour of inspection, and in pur- 

 suit of employment at his trade as millwright. He sailed 

 down the Ohio and the Mississippi alone in a skiff. It is 

 said that on his way down the Ohio he stopped at a village 

 on its right bank, where the city of Cincinnati now stands, to 

 purchase provisions, and procured all the pork that town 

 then afforded in laying in the small stock required for his 

 use. After spending some years at the South in repairing 

 cotton-gins, and subsequently in building some of these 

 machines, he returned home, and formed a stock-company 

 for their manufacture, of which company our universally 

 esteemed venerable townsman, the Hon. Artemas Hale, was 

 chosen the agent. Mr. Hale is now in his ninety-ninth year. 

 He is the oldest ex-member of Congress living. He is in 

 good health, and I trust will honor us with his presence at 

 this meeting. Our town is deeply indebted to him for much 

 of its prosperity and attractiveness. Some years ago a pas- 

 senger on tlie railroad, having the building a little way west 

 of the station here pointed out to him as a cotton-gin factory, 

 innocently remarked that he had often heard that old boots, 

 and various other miscellaneous and heterogeneous things, 

 were used in the manufacture of the " critter," but he never 

 before knew that gin could be extracted from cotton. Happ}^ 

 would it be for our community if no stronger beverage were 

 used than that which could be drawn from the cotton-boll. 



Our town is generally regarded as quite conservative. It 

 may be superfluous to add, after what has been said, that we 

 have sometimes heard it hinted that we are slightly self-con- 

 ceited. So slow are we in our movements, that we have 

 received the romantic appellation of "Sleepy Hollow" (not, 

 however, because of our schoolmasters manufactured in yon- 

 der hall). It is generally acknowledged, however, that, when 

 we do get waked up, we move all together, and in earnest. 



