Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1863-09-26
w ORC E S T R:


1900 we had four millions OF people, in 1860
twenty-four millions. But material wealth
has increased in even greater proportion; for
every dollar of valuation at the beginning of
the century we can now show sixteen. Man
ufactures, exports, the value of lands and
houses have steadily and rapidly swelled the
sum of our riches, and genius and energy, pa
tiencc and perseverance have been brought
to bear on this splendid material result. Our
vast tracts of wild land have furnished = noble
field for the agricultural interest, and cheap
acres have enlisted talent and enterprise, till
the wilderness has become garden, and we
have no need to turn deaf ear to the poor
that cry for bread, for the full barns and the
great golden stacks that make the reaped fields
look cheerful show that the worlds granary is
here and that we hold the keys of its all-pow-
erful doors.
Itseems to be our destiny, not only to feed
the world, but to clothe it also. The busy
brain works more nightly than the busy hand.
This age has seen the apotheosis of iron, and
the inventive mind filings itself into machine
ry, till wheels and levers seem to think and
reason, and delicate steel fingers surpass
those of flesh and blood in rapid and exquisite
work, and the iron arm lifts and whirls
and pushes and drags and beats pom.
derous masses that no living muscle could
influence or control. This brain-life caught
in iron meshes, has revolutiunized the manu-
featuring world. Half a century ago an in
dustrious man working faithfully all day could
separate only one pound of cotton from the
seed; and now in the same time, with the help
of a cotton-gin, he whirls four hundred pounds
OF the precious fiber from the pod, and filings
it ready for use into the factory. Genius, too,
has united steam and iron till we have an
almost omnipotent servant and has taughtthe
greatest of all tight-rope dancers to run along
The wire with our messages, till we are all
"Fane-ears," and can hear whisper thou
sand miles away. The airy Ariel flashes
round the earth in forty seconds, and the
''resonant steam eagles" follow the direc- ,
ton, lead in the leash of his glancing CIR
die.
Each day has taken some new advantage of
this wonderful power, and the future shall
untold to us yet vaster uses. Itweaves itself
in with our national life, and whereas it has
heretofore transported corn and grain, now it
takes mp armies and ordnance and sets them
down with the laundering check-mate to re-
bellion of cannon and musketry. In our last
war with England it took six weeks to tran
transport single cannon from New
York to Buffalo, and cost thousand
dollars. When are again called to
correct English insolence, and teach English
dupliclty lesson, twenty four hours will suffice
to carry the heaviest gun from the streets of
New York, and point it toward the Canada
shore of Lake Erie, and the cost, instead of a
thousand dollars, will be but ten. Vast as
has been the increase of our resources they
are but beginning to be developed, and the
curtain has but Just risen the nr,a,,;-
0oteon snaIi no longer be king, grinding
down whole race beneath the heel of an iron
despotlsm, but emancipated cotton shall beck
on us on to more and more splendid pros
perlty, and shall take the laboring man, the
free man, by the hand, and lead him forth to
fields of wealth, where culture and refine
ment are the harvests to be gathered in. 1t
seems to have settled into an undisputed fact,
that America must grow cotton for the world
Turkey, India, Egypt, the West India Isl.
ands, have put forth their claims in turn.
have been weighed in the balance of the COM
mercial world, and have been found wanting:
as the idle factories of England, the OPERA
tives of France, supported at public expense,
and the threatened financial ruin of Austria
too surely prove.
india, crowded with an immense popula-
uon, and with an extent of country where
cotton can be grown, half as large as all Eu-
rope, after thorough and convincing expert
ments, has proved unequal to the demand and
her claims are no longer urged. The natives
turn with reluctance from the food crop on
winch the lives of so crowded a population
peculiarly depend, to something that requires
more labor and energy and gives smaller i'm
mediate returns; and certain peculiarties OF
soil and climate make the quality of the Indi-
an cotton poorer than that grown in America.
In Africa, in spite of Livingston, the produc-
ton OF cotton does not increase as was antici-
pated. The negroes prefer to deal in palm
oil, which yields more with less effort and
the sanguine expectations of permanent relief
from that quarter are dispelled. And in
Egypt, Notwithstanding the enterprise of the
people, the earnest efforts of the present
Viceroy, and the introduction of American
cotton-gins and plows, reports show that it
will take years of time, and millions of capi
tai, to bring the land of the Pharaohs into the
condition to grow cotton as cheaply as it can
be grown here to-day, and until that is done
America must be the cotton.ield of the world
When the southern states are thrown open to
free labor, what field for energy and enter
prise will be offered, how every acre of that
soil, which now lies desolate beneath the blight
OF slave labor, will then shine with yellow
and crimson blossoms, and be showed over
with the white cotton.
How the industry of every nation shall be
quckened, what prosperity shall cause the
hearts OF the working masses in all lands to
sing Tor Joy, when the energy of the freemen
Oh america subdues the earth, and pours forth
wealth Of food and clothing to the DOOR
'Siins, starving multitudes NJ tbo -: