Opening Address. 127 



for everything else they required, it would still be a mistaken, 

 unprofitable, and unwise policy; because a nation which does but 

 one thing, learns but one thing; because a nation which has but 

 a single pursuit has but a limited intellectual as well as industrial 

 development. It would be essentially a barbarous, that is an 

 unenlightened nation, although it might by such a policy easily 

 satisfy all its material wants. It is through the development of a 

 thousand industries, of all the infinite subdivisions and correlations 

 of labor, that the progress of the mass of mankind is incited, is 

 stimulated, is secured. The field, the shop, the factory, the fur- 

 nace, the foundry, together constitute the people's university. 

 What one learns in one kind of labor is communicated by electric 

 sympathy to all the rest; and a people that follows fifty or five 

 hundred different pm-suits is wiser, individually and collectively, 

 than any other people can be that follows but a single pursuit. A 

 diversified industry is the basis of national strength, in war as in 

 peace. The strength of the New Englanders is in their many- 

 sidednesses, a^ has so often been exemplified. When, at the very 

 commencement of our late civil war, the frigatfe Constitution, our 

 good old vessel, was aground in Annapolis harbor, and the com- 

 mander of a Massachusetts regiment asked, " What man in the ranks 

 can navigate this vessel, let him step to the front," at once fifty- 

 eight men stepped forward, each prepared to take the good old 

 ship out of the harbor or to fight her in it, as the exigencies of 

 the case might require. It was this adaptiveness, this great mul- 

 tiplicity of the capacities of our people, that, more than anything 

 else, carried the nation through that great struggle. Our fellow 

 citizens on the other side were able, were brave, were thorough, 

 were detei'mined; but they lacked the capacity that invents every- 

 thing from a gun up to a Monitor under the pressure of sudden and 

 imforeseen emergencies. National, industrial, mechanical ability 

 is to-day one great source of safety and security in peace and in 

 war. No people knows all, no nation knows enough; but that peo- 

 ple which ■ knows most is best prepared for any great exigency of 

 strife or convylsion. Had we been still wiser at the commencement 

 of our struggle, had we then had men in our ordnance and engi- 

 neering departments who understood as we noAv understand the 

 superiority of the breech-loader over the muzzle-loading rifle oi 

 musket, our war would have been two years shorter, and oui 

 national debt $1,500,000,000 less than it is to-day. There are 

 many now standing before me, whose hearts palpitated on that 



