THE MODEL PRODUCTIVE STATE. 19 



of public prosperity, within the period of fifteen years a cliano:e 

 has passed over these American communities, such as had not 

 been witnessed in the lapse of a century before. 1 cannot mean 

 that agriculture has lost any of its importance, — that were 

 impossible, — but it has undergone changes in its relations to 

 other pursuits, it has varied its own forms and forces, and 

 especially has it felt a new class of stimulating influences which 

 were altogether unknown in the preceding ages. 



It is now nearly three hundred and fifty years since Sir 

 Thomas More published his sketch of a perfect community, his 

 ideal of a State, his classical Utopia, in which the pursuits of 

 that imaginary and quite haj)py people are described as consist- 

 ing almost entirely of the labors of husbandry, varied, it is true, 

 by a few of the simpler and ruder styles of mechanical industry. 

 •And though the pleasing romance is only a romance, yet wo 

 should find upon examination and comparison that the fictitious 

 Utopia, written more than three centuries ago in Latin, and 

 soon after transferred as a classic to our language, comprises 

 most of the elemental divisions of human employment recog- 

 nized in history before the close of the last century. Any 

 person who will take up a copy of one of the early geographies 

 formerly used in the schools, and read its brief statement of the 

 products of Massachusetts, or who will follow the history of the 

 State from its origin down to the opening of the present cen- 

 tury, cannot fail to observe " tlie short and simple annals" of 

 its productive departments of labor. Within the recollection 

 of some who hear me the spinning-wheel was found in nearly 

 every dwelling, the loom in many, — and as the historian exult- 

 ingly informs us, the wives and daughters of the farmers of 

 Massachusetts took pride in the fabrics tiieir own industry had 

 created, and were clad in garments wrought by their own 

 hands. Of the males above fifteen years of age the great 

 majority ploughed the earth ; a few ploughed the sea. But all 

 that variety and extent of our power which we now express by 

 the mention of our manufactures, had not yet awakened to life ; 

 and whatever of the useful arts existed at all, were to a consid- 

 erable extent incidental occupations in the farmer's household. 

 The genius of invention and discovery had begun somewhat 

 earlier, it is true, to unlock to some of the countries of Europe 

 the motives and stimulants which have since revolutionized 



