EXHIBITION OF 1868. 
457 
With a variety of occupations, all find something to do; ivith few^kinds of 
labor, much power is wasted in idleness. In Wisconsin there are some 40,000 
women and children of suitable age for light labor, able and willing to work. 
In New England they would all find employment. Suppose they could earn, 
with you, fifty cents a day in manufacturing establishments ; that would be 
$3.00 a week, each, or $120,000 for all, and $6,240,000 a year, or $62,400,000 
in ten years, in addition to the present wealth of your State. Savings banks 
are mostly places of deposit for the surplus earnings of working people. In 
1866, notwithstanding that large sums were invested by the same class in 
government bonds, there was deposited in the savings banks of Massachusetts 
$67,000,000. 
Statistics of the wealth and yearly income of England, carefully prepared 
by Mr. McQueen, sum up this conclusion: “Capital usefully employed in 
manufactures by an agricultural nation, in time increases the value of the 
soil ten fold.” 
The special advantage of the Northwest is that we have ample room for 
farming as wall as manufacturing, and thus the conditions which not only 
create wealth but distribute it among the intelligent land owners and 
artizans. 
It would be of great interest to enlarge on what must be passed by with a 
simple statement—varied industry helps to civilization and wealth of soul 
and life, as well as of purse. While it enlarges the capacity to enjoy the 
fruits of labor, and multiplies and distributes their enjoyment, it stimulates 
art, science, and all higher moral and mental powers. 
Some of your new towns which have sprung up and driven so rapidly have 
reached their growth, and others will soon do so. Nobody with us enjoys 
living in a town “all finished, painted and fenced in,” as the saying is. 
Let such towns build up manufactories, and thus help themselves to a new 
life, and add to the value and enjoyment of the country around. 
Not the least benefit of diversified industry is to build up many thriving 
towns, instead of the few great centres of trade, which absorb all around 
them in an agricultural community, taking much and giving back little. 
The West has made rapid advances in manufacturing, for we find by the 
census returns of 1860 that the value of manufactures of all kinds for that 
year in the eleven Western States was $390,411,942, giving employ to 222,- 
325 persons, but the twelve New England and Middle States turned out $1,- 
298,207,058 worth, and employed 1,025,000 persons. Your own State, being 
new, hardly did its proportion in this work with Ohio and Indiana, but we 
find that the woolen mills of Wisconsin had increased from fifteen, with a 
yearly product of $115,000, in 1860, to sixty oreighty, yielding $562,000 worth 
of cloths, while the 560 mills of the seven States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, 
Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota turned out about $4,200,000 worth. 
A good beginning, but we must keep on and overtake Massachusets with her 
great mills turning out $40,000,000 worth yearly, and the wool growers of 
Wisconsin, learning the kinds of wool, long or short, for combing or card- 
