48 



know in what degree to estimate men w^ho, by official 

 position, have been able to produce great results ; but 

 here is a man at twenty-tw^o years of age, invalided, 

 without phj^sical strength to discharge the ordinary du- 

 ties of life, a prisoner on board a British man-of-Vvar, 

 looking at the flag which domineered the seas of the 

 world — here is a sick man, a prisoner, a youth who 

 without friends or capital, without any adventitious aid, 

 by his own inventive genius, created a power that rules 

 the commerce of the world. The cities which have 

 sprung up around us are his monument. Other nations 

 have copied his machiner}^, and now to-day the world 

 gives to the city that was the result of his genius and 

 his enterprise, the credit of having devised the most 

 perfect development of industrial means that history 

 has known. That is not alone. The shoe interest is 

 another of the same character. Shoes have been made 

 from time immemorial, but the genius and enterprize of 

 Essex County monopolizes the manufacture and makes 

 every part of the country subsidiary either to its pro- 

 ducts or the processes which it has invented. In my 

 own town this characteristic is more prominent than 

 perhaps any other. The watch, which is as perfect a 

 time-keeper as can be suggested, is made from the 

 roughly-shaped materials given to boys and girls in the 

 morning, to come out from the manufactory a perfect 

 time-keeper and measurer of the days of men. All this 

 is done by a new process of manufacture invented here, 

 which is filling the world with its products. Every- 

 where I see the evidences of this genius and power. — 

 Let the men who are learned in the world's history • 

 let the men who have studied the various periods of 

 civilization ; let the men who know about these matters 



