A. H. BULLOCK'S ADDRESS. 213 



America. Her manufactures have only commenced. With 

 studious economy, and continual improvement, their progress is 

 upward and onward, for a growing market at home, in New 

 England, over the Western prairies, yet half peopled, and in the 

 South, of freemen and slaves. Agriculture shall catch the im- 

 pulse, and obey the necessity. We cannot enlarge our territory, 

 but extensive cultivation shall become inteiisive cultivation, by 

 which an acre, a third of a century hence, shall yield what five 

 or ten acres produce now. And when the agricultural and me- 

 chanic societies shall meet, after the lapse of thirty years, 

 where we are now, they shall count an aggregate production 

 such as our times have not contemplated. They will then look 

 forward, as we do now, to a future before them, of inventions 

 and discoveries, yet to be apprehended, of more machinery and 

 more food, to be produced for a population ever increasing, and 

 ever making new demand^s for new and multiplied wants. And 

 over the whole field of their vision, to them, past and future, 

 they will recognize lines of harmony that bind all the sons of 

 labor together, in one common interest and destiny. 



Our government was formed for the purpose of unfolding, 

 protecting, and expanding the interests of American labor, and 

 weaving them into one system as broad as the Union. If the 

 pursuits of men, however diversified, are, at the same time, 

 identical — if American society is but an aggregation of labor- 

 ers — then it ought to be the universally recognized duty of gov- 

 ernment to support and strengthen the right arm of its power. 

 I say not, here, how that object would best be obtained — whether 

 by legislation, or by withholding legislation, and leaving labor 

 to take care of itself — that is a discussion which does not belong 

 to the present occasion. But the principle — the doctrine, that 

 government, emanating from the people, should have, for its first 

 and highest aim, the promotion and preservation of the indus- 

 try of the people, that, I take it. it is proper at all times to main- 

 tain in the midst of a community, linked together by a com- 

 mon and vital tie. And, accordingly, we find the record. Our 

 glorious Constitution was erected upon that basis. In Massa- 

 chusetts, Paul Revere, with his fellow-mechanics, at the ever- 

 memorable tavern in Boston, gave a great impulse. When 



