E. H. DERBY'S ADDRESS. 217 



Do the one million of tons, moved annually by the railroads 

 out of Boston, doubling once in four years, give no impulse to 

 industry in and around the city ; or do these great works of 

 melioration, which bear industry — the only marketable com- 

 modity of the poor man — to the best theatre for its exercise, give 

 no increased value to industry itself? 



Does not every house, erected in and around the city, and 

 every ship added to its rolls, require nearly an acre of land to 

 supply its immediate demands, and is not every such house and 

 ship a market? And are not every drain, vault, and chimney, 

 a source of fertility? Are, or are not, the effects which attend 

 the progress of the railroads of Massachusetts, injurious or ben- 

 eficial to the county of Middlesex, and what are its position and 

 prospects with reference to agriculture?* 



Our county embraces an area of eight hundred square miles, 

 and its population, rapidly increasing since the census of 1840, 

 may now be safely estimated at 120,000, or one hundred and 

 fifty to the square mile. In manufactures, it annually produces 

 twenty-three millions of dollars ; and is, in this great department 

 of industry, the leading county of the state and of the Union. 

 The annual products and manufactures in this single county, 

 are more than double the average exportation of bread-stuffs 

 from the whole Union, and would pay for more than a moiety of 

 all the flour, grain, and corn exported during the season of famine. 

 Rapid as has been the improvement of agriculture, and wide as 

 has been its expansion in new counties and states during the 

 last twenty years, the advance of manufactures has been quite 

 as rapid ; and if there be truth in the remark of a great British 

 statesman, that every loom stopped in England stops a dozen 

 ploughs, how many American ploughs have the looms of Mid- 

 dlesex set in motion ? 



The combined effect of manufactures and railroads, has been 



* The effect of railroads, thus far, appears to be, to meliorate the condition of those resid- 

 ing at a distance from seaports, and to elevate the value of their farms and products, with- 

 out depressing proper!}' nearer to the great markets. The increased resources of the inte- 

 rior are illustrated by the fact that, in August last, nearly three millions were subscribed in 

 the country for a short railroad from Manchester to Lawrence, while it took nearly twenty 

 years, half a century since, to raise three quarters of a million to construct the Middlesex 

 Canal. 



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