The progress of the miner has also been great.  Of coal our production has small; now many millions of tons are mined annually.  So with iron, which formed scarcely an appreciable part of our products half a century ago, we now produce more than the world consumed at the beginning of our national existence.  Lead, zinc, and copper, from being articles of import, we may expect to be large exporters of in the near future.  The development of gold and silver mines in the United States and Territories has not only been remarkable, but has had a large influence upon the business of all commercial nations.  Our merchants in the last hundred years have had a success and have established a reputation for enterprise, sagacity, progress, and integrity unsurpassed by peoples of older nationalities.  This “good name” is not confined to their homes, but goes out upon every sea and into every port where commerce enters.  With equal pride we can point to our progress in all of the learned professions.

As we are now about to enter upon our second centennial—­commenting our manhood as a nation—­it is well to look back upon the past and study what will be best to preserve and advance our future greatness From the fall of Adam for his transgression to the present day no nation has ever been free from threatened danger to its prosperity and happiness.  We should look to the dangers threatening us, and remedy them so far as lies in our power.  We are a republic whereof one man is as good as another before the law.  Under such a form of government it is of the greatest importance that all should be possessed of education and intelligence enough to cast a vote with a right understanding of its meaning.  A large association of ignorant men can not for any considerable period oppose a successful resistance to tyranny and oppression from the educated few, but will inevitably sink into acquiescence to the will of intelligence, whether directed by the demagogue or by priestcraft.  Hence the education of the masses becomes of the first necessity for the preservation of our institutions.  They are worth preserving, because they have secured the greatest good to the greatest proportion of the population of any form of government yet devised.  All other forms of government approach it just in proportion to the general diffusion of education and independence of thought and action.  As the primary step, therefore, to our advancement in all that has marked our progress in the past century, I suggest for your earnest consideration, and most earnestly recommend it, that a constitutional amendment be submitted to the legislatures of the several States for ratification, making it the duty of each of the several States to establish and forever maintain free public schools adequate to the education of all the children in the rudimentary branches within their respective limits, irrespective of sex, color, birthplace, or religions; forbidding the teaching in said schools of religious, atheistic, or pagan tenets; and prohibiting the granting of any school funds or school taxes, or any part thereof, either by legislative, municipal, or other authority, for the benefit or in aid, directly or indirectly, of any religious sect or denomination, or in aid or for the benefit of any other object of any nature or kind whatever.