AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 51 



islands Ratmanoff, Kruzensten, and a rock about midway, from which 

 islands at a moderate elevation, both continents are visible ; where the 

 water is not more than two hundred feet deep ! with muddy bottom, and 

 where an eternal current runs from south to north and no ice islands from 

 the Northern sea can ever come. That we believe will be the great Tele- 

 gram avenue of the world ! The Emperor of Russia is now examining it ; 

 and any school boy can tell you, by the rtde of three, how many more 

 wires the world must have than we have along the avenues near this pal- 

 ace. Such was the judgment of the Mechanics' Club of the American In- 

 stitute sixteen months ago, as you will see in the volume of our Transac- 

 tions for 1857. 



But the grand object of the Institute has been obtained — that object was 

 to establish all the manufactures of importance at home — to begin with 

 things of the first necessity and then go on to the last degree of excellence 

 in them, and finally, to every work of art. We began to make nails, not 

 those hob nails which England sneeringly said we could not and should not 

 make — but cut nails, for driving and holding fast, ten times better and 

 five times cheaper — the cut nails of America ! And we began to make 

 cotton goods ! and we have made more useful cloths of cotton than were 

 ever made before, and at almost one-fourth the cost of the slazy stuffs we 

 paid so dear for 60 years ago. We have commenced work in iron and steel, 

 and we defy all the earth in the approaching iron and steel crops, soon to 

 appear from the hands of our cyclops ! We have more ore, and more coal 

 land than Britain has land ! We have copper in bars ready made in our 

 mines — of hundreds of tons weight — our great trouble is to cut it up so 

 that we can handle it ! When mankind have all worked up their coal and 

 iron, we will supply them ! and as our folks often say, no mistake. And 

 is all this idle boasting and selfishness ? No, my fellow citizens, the work 

 is for universal good ! the better and cheaper the goods, so much the better 

 for all men ! We can make a good shirt now for every human being ! Let 

 our continent speak for herself — she can grow cotton I India is trying, but 

 can't do it — she has too much heat and drought together ! Africa is try- 

 ing ! North America can grow it and will grow it, and cover them all over 

 with cotton, of all the best kinds and at the least cost. 



We can supply the world with machinery ! — our forests as well as our 

 mines back us for that ! We have been called, in my early days, a wooden 

 world I and if any body has a notion to build a wooden Leviathan, we 

 have American trees on our west coast which will make a keel which will 

 square ten to twenty feet, and will make masts large enough for a ship ten 

 times longer than the great ship. And we can copper her if she was too 

 long to turn round in the British Channel ! Call this Yankee boasting ? 

 My good friends, neither I nor you can boast loud enough of our position 

 and our means ! for they are mighty. 



We are of late years making great efforts to repoir the desolation of mil- 

 lions of good acres caused by bad farming, and to increase the quantity, 

 quality and variety of our crops. Hundreds of agricultural clubs and so- 



