AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 4M 



It is a manly spirit that rises superior to ills like these; re-creates 

 destroyed fortunes, and reestablishes the confidence of the world 

 in the integrity of men, by discharging obligations that the law 

 regarded as cancelled by misfortunes. Though its mission is the 

 distribution of the world's wealth, its own prizes do not follow the 

 same liberal law. They bring together too often, in close proxi- 

 mity, the palace and the hovel, and show in the most favored 

 localities, 



" How wide the limits stand 

 Betwixt a splendid and a happy land." 



It is not easy to give an exact line of demarcation between the 

 industry of mechanics and manufacturers. Unlike commerce, 

 both change the character of the material passing through the 

 hands of its agents, instead of making an exchange merely, giving 

 them a new form and greatly increased value. The measure of 

 increase is the cost of labor and the profits of capital invested. 

 As a national interest, manufacturing industry must be classed 

 with mechanic arts, as it operates by a combination of material, 

 machinery, labor, capital and skill, to produce national wealth in 

 new and improved forms. The mechanic arts have a broader 

 range and influence than either manufacturing or commercial 

 industry. The term mechanic is employed to denote that branch 

 of philosophy which treats of the equilibrium and motion of solid 

 bodies, and its signification is so far extended as to embrace the 

 abstract laws of motion and the equilibrium of all bodies, solid, 

 fluid, or aeriform. From a range of investigation so extended, 

 and a philosophy so abstruse, the great men of antiquity and of 

 modern times have deduced the simple powers which every me- 

 chanic comprehends and employs in his least important labors, 

 viz : the lever, pulley, the wheel and axle, the inclined plane, the 

 screw and the wedge. Science, philosophy, arts, statesmanship 

 and war have no prouder names than those connected Avith the 

 discovery and development of these simple mechanical powers. 



The founder of mechanical science is no less a man than Ar- 

 chimedes. He discovered the inclined plane, the jDulley, the 

 screw, and the lever, to which the ancient mechanicians reduced 

 all mechanical powers. The labors of Galileo, as a mechanic, are 

 considered to be higher proofs of his transcendent genius than 



