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which have been held out, in the fertility and cheapness of 

 the Western lands, to the young men and young women, 

 whose hands were essential to the loom, the spindle, the 

 lapstone or the anvil. The absolute necessity of counter- 

 acting these inducements and temptations, by an increased 

 rate of wages at home, has materially aggravated one of 

 the greatest difficulties which we have encountered, in the 

 way of a successful competition with the manufacturers of 

 the old world. The influence of the luxuriant prairies and 

 rich bottoms of Illinois, and Indiana, and Iowa, and Wis- 

 consin, and the rest, has been similar to that of the placers 

 and gold mines of California at the present moment ; and, 

 though less in degree, has been far more steady and dura- 

 ble than that is likely to be. Our young men and young 

 women will not be long in learning, that there are more pro- 

 fitable diggings, in the long run, on this side of the Rocky 

 Mountains than on the other. They will not be long in 

 appreciating the philosophy of the cock, in the old fable of 

 ^sop, who discovered that corn was a more reliable trea- 

 sure than jewels. They will not be long in realizing, that 

 even golden carrots may be a more certain crop than carats 

 of gold. They will soon understand the wisdom of Frank- 

 lin, in his conclusion of one of the numbers of the " Busy 

 Body," — a little series of essays published by him in Phi- 

 ladelphia in 1729, and which, though among his earliest 

 compositions, are replete with the wit and shrewdness and 

 sterling common sense which characterized his maturer 

 productions. 



" I shall conclude," said he, " with the words of my dis- 

 creet friend, Agricola, of Chester County, when he gave 

 his son a good plantation, — ' My son, I give thee now a 

 valuable parcel of land. I assure thee I have found a con- 

 siderable quantity of gold by digging there : thee may'st 

 do the same; but thee must carefully observe this, — never 

 to dig more than plough-deep.' " 



