natural and unaided productions.  Labor obtains these materials, works upon them, and fashions them to human use.  Now it has been the object of scientific art, or of the application of science to art, to increase this active agency, to augment its power, by creating millions of laborers in the form of machines all but automatic, all to be diligently employed and kept at work by the force of natural powers.  To this end these natural powers, principally those of steam and falling water, are subsidized and taken into human employment.  Spinning-machines, power-looms, and all the mechanical devices, acting, among other operatives, in the factories and workshops, are but so many laborers.  They are usually denominated labor-saving machines, but it would be more just to call them labor-doing machines.  They are made to be active agents; to have motion, and to produce effect; and though without intelligence, they are guided by laws of science, which are exact and perfect, and they produce results, therefore, in general, more accurate than the human hand is capable of producing.  When we look upon one of these, we behold a mute fellow-laborer, of immense power, of mathematical exactness, and of ever-during and unwearied effort.  And while he is thus a most skilful and productive laborer, he is a non-consumer, at least beyond the wants of his mechanical being.  He is not clamorous for food, raiment, or shelter, and makes no demands for the expenses of education.  The eating and drinking, the reading and writing, and the clothes-wearing world, are benefited by the labors of these co-operatives, in the same way as if Providence had provided for their service millions of beings, like ourselves in external appearance, able to labor and to toil, and yet requiring little or nothing for their own consumption or subsistence; or rather, as if Providence had created a race of giants, each of whom, demanding no more for his support and consumption than a common laborer, should yet be able to perform the work of a hundred.

Now, Sir, turn back to the Massachusetts tables of production, and you will see that it is these automatic allies and co-operators, and these powers of nature, thus employed and placed under human direction, which have come, with such prodigious effect, to man’s aid, in the great business of procuring the means of living, of comfort, and of wealth, and which have so swollen the products of her skilful industry.  Look at these tables once more, Sir, and you will see the effects of labor, united with and acting upon capital.  Look yet again, and you will see that credit, mutual trust, prompt and punctual dealings, and commercial confidence, are all mixed up as indispensable elements in the general system.

I will ask you to look yet once more, Sir, and you will perceive that general competence, great equality in human condition, a degree of popular knowledge and intelligence nowhere surpassed, if anywhere equalled, the prevalence of good moral sentiment, and extraordinary general prosperity, are the result of the whole.  Sir, I have done with Massachusetts.  I do not praise the old “Bay State” of the Revolution; I only present her as she is.