).
If there be those in this hall who think that hand-craft is adverse to
rede-craft, let me ask them to study the lives of men of mark. Isaac
Newton began his life as a farm-boy who carried truck to a market town;
Spinoza, the philosopher of Amsterdam, ground lenses for his livelihood;
Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, was mechanic to the University
of Glasgow; Porson, the great professor of Greek, was trained as a
weaver; George Washington was a land surveyor; Benjamin Franklin a
printer.
Before I close let me draw a lesson from the history of our land. Some
of you doubtless bear in mind that before the late war men used to say,
"Cotton is king;" and why so? Because the trades which hung on this crop
were so many and so strong that they ruled all others. The rise or fall
of a penny in the price of cotton at Liverpool affected planters in
the South, spinners in the North, seamen on the ocean, bankers
and money-changers everywhere. Now wheat and petroleum share the
sovereignty; but then cotton was king. Who enthroned this harmless
plant? Two masters of hand-craft, one of whom was born a few miles east
of this place in Westborough; the other was a native of England who
spent most of his days a few miles south of this city.
Pages:
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136