3% [Assembly 



uminous to be read, is still a great desideratum for the laboring classes. 

 A current political history, divested of party prejudice and misrepre- 

 sentation, is no less necessary for the voter and statesman. Individ- 

 ual enterprise is little likely to supply these wants, on terms suited 

 to the straitened means of the millions. But if they were furnished 

 as here proposed, their intrinsic value would make them desirable to 

 the wealthy; and their cheapness would bring them within the reach 

 of the poor. I am of opinion that one hundred thousand copies would 

 be sold annually; and as the population increased even that amount 

 might be doubled; — I am terapfed to say quadrupled. 



GAIN TO THE LABORER. 



2. To the laboring classes, the volume of practical science would 

 be valuable as a source of pecuniary gain. It would bring to their 

 aid the lights of science, and the results of experience. It would 

 point out new and felicitous methods of operation in the shop and 

 the field It would lighten the labor of the human muscle, while it 

 gave healthful occupation to the intellect. It would show them what 

 others have done, and provoke them to noble emulation. It would 

 suggest expedients to meet emergencies; and remedies for a thousand 

 evils It would wake indolence from its sleep, and turn industry into 

 new channels. It would, in short, increase and diffuse practical 

 knowledge, and thus help the toiling man in numberless ways; and 

 it would be his own fault if he did not reap from each annual dollar 

 the harvest of "thirty, sixty, or an hundred fold." 



MENTAL IMPROVEMENT. 



These volumes would serve a higher purpose than to increase 

 wealth; and improve the mind as well as the condition. On two great 

 branches of knowledge, they would contain all that the masses have 

 the leisure to learn. The late act of Congress proposes to increase 

 and diffuse knowledge among men by establishing a Museum, Labo- 

 ratory, Library, and Gallery of Art in the city of Washington. 

 The present plan proposes to put the Museum, Laboratory, Library, 

 and Gallery of Art into one of these Serials, and send them broad- 

 cast through the country, and lay them upon the tables of a million 

 families. More useful by the cottage fireside than a Lecturer from 

 the University, they would discourse daily to its inmates of things 

 useful and pleasing, without taxing their hospitality. They would 

 be pored over by the bright eyes of childhood, and the dim vision of 



