state convention—manufacturing. 
203 
Acquired ascendency is often the result of skilled labor. 
Especially has this been true in the case of Great Britain. 
At the shrine of skilled labor the nations of the world have 
been compelled to bow, and if the workman be true to himself 
and his family, he will find that the treasury of our country is at 
his command, and he will cease to be called a “ hewer of wood 
and drawer of water.” 
The acquisition of mechanical skill should occupy a prominent 
position in the education of the young, securing all the advan¬ 
tages usually awarded to the professions, by opening to the stu¬ 
dious and the ambitious a field of labor no where excelled, a field 
so diversified as to give constant employment to the races ofearthvfor 
ages. The question arises, How may this be accomplished ? We an¬ 
swer, Let a school of mechanical arts be established in connec¬ 
tion with our State University. Let as much effort be expended 
in the education of first-class mechanics as in the production of 
first-class lawyers, ’physicians and clergymen, at least effort 
enough to produce a first-class workman. This would do much 
to place the mechanical arts where they belong, on a par, so far 
as honor is concerned, with any of the so-called learned profes- 
sions. Heaven speed the day when the educated laboring man 
will be considered the peer of any man who walks the footstool 
of the Great Master Mechanic of the Universe. 
With our present facilities, there are few if any of our towns, 
and none of our cities, which do not possess peculiar advantages 
for manufacturing. With our great lakes on the north and east, 
affording a direct communication with the eastern states and the 
Atlantic; the Mississippi on the west, making a grand highway to 
the southern states and the Gulf, and with our lines of railways 
uniting these and visiting in their course most of the accessible 
points for this class of industry, thus affording a cheap and rapid 
transit for the raw material as well as the manufactured article, 
who can determine the future ol this already great state? 
. With the abundance of our ores, instead of shipping them in 
such vast quantities, paying a profit to the eastern manufacturer 
and the tariff for the return of the manufactured article, there 
ought to be in our midst the furnace, the rolling mill, the iron 
and nail shop, the lead and copper works. Along our water 
