THE MINER, MANUFACTURER, AND MECHANIC must labor side by side, or in the same community with the planter and the farmer, if we wish to profit by our magnificent resources, increase in wealth, and keep step with the progress of intelligence and civilization.
The husbandmen and shepherds of the barbarous ages used their fingers for forks, and the skins of their flocks and herds for clothing; yet their Tubal-cains were forced to supply them with knives and instruments of brass. The savages of America de pended on their rude mechanical skill in constructing snares and bows and arrows for their food, while the Hottentots of Africa owe their precarious and miserable existence more to their ingenuity than to the natural fruits of the earth.
The soil cannot be made to yield its fruit without some instrument of mechanical construction. The burned stick of the Indian, the wooden plough of the Roman, the rude coulter of our grandfathers or the steam cultivators of to-day, must be made use of.
We would relapse into barbarism without the aid of iron and those metals which subject all nature to our use and pleasure; but we cannot obtain them without the miner and the manufacturer nor can we fashion them to our wants without the skill of the mechanic.
Yet science and knowledge are quite as essential. The ancient manufacturer made ingots of steel, and the East Indian of to-day, blowing his fires through a sheep-skin bag, can produce a haypound of metal per day! Science has increased the production to one hundred pounds. Our ancestors in England carried their coal, ore, and iron on the backs of women and asses in 1600; and fifty years ago the planters of Virginia rolled their hogsheads of tobacco from Danville to Richmond!* Steam now does the work with a thousandfold increase. It is thus manifest that the miner, manufacturer, and mechanic are not only useful to the planter and the farmer, but absolutely indis pensable. They are the handnaids of science and skill. It is said that John Randolph of Roanoke wrote above his door, "Let no mechanic enter here;" and well, perhaps, that he wrote these words, or that the principle expressed existed in the slavemaster's heart, for the good of humanity and the emancipation of the slave; but alas for the blood they have shed, the desolation they have caused the unfortunate South! The miner, manufacturer, and mechanic are not only absolutely necessary for the pro duction of food and clothing, but they furnish the means of promoting intelligence and civilization, the necessities, comforts, pleasures, and luxuries of peace, and the imple ments of defence in war.
These facts are evident. It is manifest that the richest soils must become eventually exhausted and valueless, by continual drains on their resources, without recompense. A purely agricultural people, therefore, adds nothing to the permanent wealth of their country, while a combined manufacturing and agricultural community constantly grows rich. There are many examples; but let Virginia and Massachusetts stand in evidence. The former was naturally rich, but is now poor; the latter was naturally poor, but is now rich.
But a purely agricultural community, as we have shown, cannot exist to-day without the aid of the manufacturer; and, since the first cannot fail to grow poor without the direct aid of the second, it cannot be a question in political economy as to the relative advantages of using foreign or domestic productions.
The miner, manufacturer, and mechanic must labor side by side with the planter and the farmer, not only in order to obtain the best results and acquire wealth, but to save our natural resources from depreciation and eventual exhaustion.
The mineral resources of our country are equal to its agricultural; but the one cannot be profitably developed without the other, and domestic industry must be employed to accomplish the result.
If political economy, every-day examples, and reason, teach us those lessons, is it not strange that we have not profited by them? Is it not a matter of astonishment that American statesmen should have so long neglected American resources? Is it not absurd for our farmers and planters to advocate free trade, which not only tends to im poverish themselves, but their lands also ? The foregoing facts and arguments should be sufficient to convince intelligent men; but, since prejudice, party, and the sophistry of foreign economists, agents, and im porters are arrayed against the truth, we will give a few plain and