20 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



Imman life, but the effect had as yet been scarcely felt on this 

 side of the water. A few strnggling attempts at manufactnres, 

 — small investments and still smaller returns, — had only the 

 influence to hold up to the gaze of an agricultural people the 

 isolated experiment and the signal failure. We have but few 

 official statistics of that period. We know that there were 

 fisheries, bold and hardy, — a commerce, sagacious and fore- 

 casting the future, — mechanic arts, limited in their scope and 

 absolutely feeble ; but in the main, in all the State, it was 

 agriculture, not studious of improvement and intensive in its 

 experiments and trials, as agriculture now is, but dormant, 

 inert, and plodding its way unawares towards the better con- 

 dition that awaited it. Men scarcely perceived the star of the 

 social destiny that hung over them. 



Such was the situation of our domestic industry, within the 

 memory of some of you, and prior to that division of labor and 

 separation of employments which now imparts to it such majestic 

 power. At that time there were but fifteen cotton mills in the 

 United States, working, it is said, about eight thousand spindles 

 — or one-fifth of the number that are now operated under a 

 single roof in Lewiston, or Lawrence, or Sprague ; while, of the 

 long and diversified list of labor now returned by the assessors 

 to the Secretary's office, not one item in ten had even an 

 existence. Such was the former state of things. 



But the present generation is living under a new, and you 

 will not refuse to concur with me, under a better dispensation. 

 This is the era of the organization and classification of the 

 occupations of mankind. The ideal of a State is no longer one 

 whose population, whether on the Merrimack, or on the Con- 

 necticut, or by the side of the sea, is disproportionately engaged 

 in agriculture, and therefore without "that variety of pursuit 

 which furnishes the wholesome adjustment of demand and 

 supply. That is now regarded as a State of high and complete 

 development, whose people find the most varied and profitable 

 employment ; whose producing capacity keeps pace with its 

 consuming capacity, its production always suggesting and sup- 

 plying its consumption, and its consumption at every stage of 

 increase exciting its production ; thus maintaining within a 

 laboratory of demand and supply, and carrying on without a 

 free and profitable exchange of products that blesses alike those 



