good, amidst the fashionable fastidiousness and daintiness of our modern customs, when so many nice young men dodge behind a dry goods counter, or into the dull decencies of a profession, only to get rid of laying their bones to toil, to let some masculine calling stand forth as a witness of the wholesome law that by the literal sweat of the brow the best of men shall eat their bread; that sweat which moistens the cement that binds the social welfare together. Among all the new clans and lodges, let us be content so long as there is no order of Donothings. The time will be when the regular idler, consuming and not producing, shall be felt to be such an insufferable outrage and excrescence on society, that he shall be compelled to make instant apology, at the whipping-post of public opinion, for the presumption of occupying a human organization. You see this change coming about. I look upon it as one of the grand reforms inaugurated by Christian ideas, evidenced and furthered by nothing more signally than by your own public jubilees of handiwork, your royal ovations of industry, your coronations of the genius of labor. You see it also by the politic flatteries which any lazy demagogue, who has objects to carry, in these days, finds it expedient to bestow on what he patronizingly calls "the working classes." Certain talkative gentlemen, following in the wake of Carlyle's reverberating remonstrance, like "flutes and soft recorders" after a roll of indignant thunder, have piped and sung to the age of the "Dignity of labor," "Godlike labor, with the grimed brow and the tough hand," till the "noble army" of laborers, canonized into equal honors with the "noble army of martyrs," but for some intrinsic valor of their own, might have subsided into the complacent and comfortable persuasion that nothing was left for them to do but to vote the party-ticket, be dined the day after election, and lounge on ottomans, and be sprinkled with rose-water, the rest

of life. Now, it seems to me the true way to honor labor and laborers is to put an honest faith first in their capabilities, and then call them to be true to their own order, in their own line. To provoke them, and keep them uneasy, till they have stretched their sinews to more various achievements, is the manliest way to eulogize them. Work will always be the business of the hero or the saint, and a blessing, while God lives, who worketh hitherto; and no device is friendly to the race which brings either a compulsory or a luxurious sloth.

Just at this point crops out one of those solemn social questions, so much more easily settled in the theories of political economists than in the anxieties of hungry families. It is suggested afresh, in some form, by every display like that in yonder halls. Hands and machines come to competition. The contrivance that does the work of a hundred hands threatens to leave the hands idle, and the mouths that match them empty. No general reasoning, no grim logic of "Help yourself if you can," no past experiment, quite suffices to allay this alarm of the people. Combining with natural prejudice and the pride of a self-sufficient conservatism, it disturbs many minds, and does retard, in some places, even the impetuosity of nineteenth century invention. I can myself recall the scene, indeed, it was less than ten years ago, where, in one of the most intelligent agricultural districts of New England, the neighbors of the venturous farmer who first bought a horse-rake refused to be convinced by the plainest proofs of its economy, but looked askance at it over the fences as an impertinent piece of agricultural heresy, almost as bad as if the good old parson had shortened his sermon below the regular hour and a quarter, giving them less than the worth of their money in the pew-tax. The old spirit is by no means dead - however effectually you, gentlemen, may be aggressing upon it which has persecuted the

prophets, and ridiculed the thinkers, and starved the innovators; which, in the old world, has often collected a rabble to mob a new discovery that came with healing on its wings; which forbade Watt to open his instrument shop in Glasgow; which compelled the House of Representatives of the United States, in 1810, to refuse Robert Fulton the use of their Hall to deliver a lecture on steam navigation, on the ground that it was "a visionary scheme;" which sneered at "Fulton's Folly," as it was nicknamed, in Brown's shipyard, at New York; which actually broke the heart of poor William Lee, in the time of James I., driving him, by English indifference, to France, and then, by French bigotry, from Rouen to Paris, where he died in misery, because the world would not let its stockings be made by his stocking-machine; which, in South America, according to Humboldt, instigated the citizens to petition the government against the building of a road among the Andes, lest it should damage the interests of the carriers, who had enjoyed the monopoly of carrying travellers across the mountains in baskets strapped on their backs; which influenced the Swiss peasants, when they saw Rupp constructing the superb slide of Alpnach, for bringing down the pine timber of Mount Pilatus into Lake Lucerne, to accuse his trigonometry of being the inspiration of the devil; which drove the lace manufactory and prosperity out of Nottinghamshire into Devonshire; which, only forty years ago, threw brickbats at a collier in Philadelphia who brought down nine wagon loads of mountain coal to sell, hooting after him as an impostor, that pretended to sell stones for fuel; which trembled all the way from Boston to Albany, when the Western Railroad was about to be laid, with the ludicrous fear that horses would go out of fashion, and have to be shot down in their shoes as a drug; which fretted the Flemish gentleman, who began with commiserating American ignorance, but, after hearing from his

American fellow-traveller a description of Amos Whittemore's card-machine and Thomas Blanchard's lathe, pronounced them impossible, grew angry, and took to sulks, at the impudence of the Yankee who undertook to put off upon him these stories of Gulliver inventions; which drove Hargreaves out of Lancashire for his life, and prompted Laurence Earnshaw to break up his own machine, in a fit of benevolent apprehension, lest he should take bread out of his neighbors' mouths, when a bold improvement on both their designs by Arkwright gave wages and food to millions of workmen, raised the commerce in cotton from two million pounds a year to a thousand millions of pounds, and poured wealth into the treasury of the nation and the world.

That timid temper, I say, is not exterminated yet; and, therefore, it is one of the beneficent ends of your enterprize to come in as a vindicator and interpreter, in this insane insurrection of Hands against machines; to justify all manner of intellectual originality; to demonstrate the absolute justice of the industrial laws. It is yours to prove that the multiplying of labor-saving machinery can never diminish the means of living; in fact, that labor is not finally saved, but multiplies itself, by and in the machine. The final cause of labor-saving contrivances is to increase labor. This is the eternal paradox of the

world's growing civilization. A mechanic is not worthy of his name, who prizes any such piece of workmanship because it releases him from action, or relaxes the necessity of his doing; he will prize it precisely as bringing a means, and a stimulus, and time, for doing more than ever. The several industries of mankind move forward under one harmonious plan. Every legitimate development or production in one favors the others. I know of nothing in the whole history of men more beautiful or more majestic than the certainty of this rule. The illustrations of it are the annals of all the arts. Apart from its own

fascinating interest, it is one of the most splendid proofs of the being and providence of God. It is a more convincing argument for religion than often gets voice from a pulpit. The family of man are under one Father. It is as sure as gravitation, that every fresh mechanism He puts into the world through an ingenious mind, He takes up and makes a part of his unimpeachable goodness. Its inconveniences are local and temporary; its beneficence is cosmopolitan and permanent. It enriches, employs, establishes, equalizes. It creates demands only to satisfy them; it saves expenditure only to scatter it with a wider sweep. A few copyists are, at first, sent adrift by the printing-press; but what an army of fainting operatives that mighty engine nourishes to-day! a stupendous philanthropist of employment, if that were its only function! The sewing-machine may bring a brief embarrassment to the poor sempstress; let thoughtful charity consider it, and soften the transition; but, in the end, she also will be the stronger and better for it, if she only keeps her own mind up with the times. If she sits sullenly down, and complains, or persists in making her fingers competitors of wheels and spindles, she will be crushed. There is less stitching to be done, that her faculties may be liberated for larger enterprizes, and her hands find a more exalted ministry. It is futile to be jealous of the laws of progression. Let us rather make them friends by conforming to them, and get them to back us up, by standing on their side. We must all go where the Almighty points, and not ask to have the orbs of celestial light stand still for our private accommodation. We must be hospitable and brave in our welcome of the new future, as well as thankful venerators of the old past.

So far, then, we have the place and office of the Hand. It has a school, a discipline and a dignity of its own. It is reconciled with all the mastery that man's best wits can wield. Its