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 Copy 1 
 
 ■m 
 
 W 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 OF 
 
 HON. DAilGL iEEDHAM 
 
 AT THE 
 
 DEDICATION OF THE TOWN HALL 
 
 FALMOUTH, MASS., 
 
 SEPTEMBER 29, 1881. 
 
 JOSEPH S. FAY, (iEO. E. CLAPvKE, J AS. M. LAMBERT, 
 
 COMMITTEE. 
 
 ^. 
 
 « 
 
 
 AYER, MASS. : 
 
 PRINTED AT THE PUBLIC SPIRIT OFFICE. -^ ^jq 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 OF 
 
 ION. DANiE nmm 
 
 AT THE 
 
 DEDICATION OF THE TOWN HALL 
 
 AT 
 
 FALMOUTH, MASS., 
 
 SEPTEMBER 29, 1881. 
 
 4 
 
 JOSEPHS. FAY, GEO. E. CLARKE, JAS. M. LAMBERT, 
 
 COMMITTEE. 
 
 AYER, MASS. : 
 PRINTED AT THE OFFICE OF THE PUBLIC SPIRIT. 
 
Falmouth, Oct 5, 1881. 
 Hon. Daniel Needham, 
 
 Dear Sir. — Believing that the distribution among our towns- 
 men of your admirable address delivered at the dedication of our 
 new Town Hall on the 29th of September, would be productive 
 of much good, the Committee in charge of the services, on that 
 occasion, respectfully ask for a copy of the address for publica- 
 tion. 
 
 Very respectfully, 
 
 Joseph S. Fay, > 
 
 Geo. E. Clarke, >- Committee. 
 
 J. M. Lambert, ). 
 
 Boston, Nov, 22, 1881. 
 To Joseph S. Fay, Esq., Geo. A. Clarke, Esq., and J. 31. Lam- 
 bert, Esq., 
 Gentlemen. — Your request for a copy of the Address deliv- 
 ered by me at the dedication of the new Town Hall at Falmouth, 
 Sept. 29th, 1881, came to hand at a time when official engage- 
 ments fully occupied my time. I hasten now to forward you 
 the Address in accordance with your kind request. 
 
 Very EespectfuUy, 
 
 Daniel Need ham. 
 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 Maf it please your Exxellency, Mr. Chairman, fellow citizens 
 and ladies and gentlemen : 
 
 With bowed heads, reverent hearts and grieved minds, a 
 nation extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean, 
 has followed the remains of its dead chief from the Capitol 
 city to its final resting place. The tolling bell in every 
 village and district and city in the great land has mourn- 
 fully, recited the story of his tragic death, and the neart 
 stricken grief of a bereaved people. 
 
 He was a true type of American manhood, elevated from 
 the people, among the people, by the people, by a recognition 
 of those qualities of heart and mind which for more than a 
 century have been the outgrowth of our institutions and 
 the foundation of our government. We see the elected 
 and beloved ruler yield the life so dear to us all, and doubly 
 dear to us in him our accepted president, and no confusion 
 of the civil policy, no delay in the establishment of suc- 
 cession comes to the Republic, whose life and security 
 has been and is in a recognition of the capacity of the peo- 
 ple to make their own laws and elect their own rulers. 
 
 Turning from the sad thoughts and scenes of the last 
 three months, without for a moment forgetful of the lesson 
 they have taught and the immortal pages they have made 
 in our National history, the town of Falmouth, incorpor- 
 ated June the 4th, 1686, gathers in its son's and daughter's 
 for cono-ratjLilation in the erection of this beautiful structure 
 
and for an hour's consideration of the connection establish- 
 ed between the town hall and the stability of the great gov- 
 ernment, which, without shock or misgiving, whilst it has 
 dropped upon the grave of its dead chief the tears of sor- 
 row, it has given to its new and acknowledged head the 
 respect of loyalty and the confidence of love. 
 
 What son of Falmouth is not proud of this day ? What 
 son of Falmouth, whose father has looked out upon this 
 broad and beautiful ocean — familiarized himself with the 
 ever passing fleet of moving ships over the waters of Buz- 
 zard's Bay and Vineyard Sound, does not to-day rejoice, 
 that the labors of sire and grandsire, planted deep the roots 
 of self-government, out of which, individual manhood has 
 been secured for every descendant ! What son of Fal- 
 mouth, who in youth wandered from the native soil and 
 aided in building new homes and new civilization in later 
 established settlements^ is not proud that he can come back 
 to-day and refresh his eyes with the landscape of his boy- 
 hood — the light-house of Nobska Hill ; the high undulating 
 shores of the distant islands, and the ever changing beau- 
 ties of the surrounding sea ! 
 
 Home — home — what is it not ? Can the painter put it 
 on canvas ? Can the poet weave it into verse ? Can the 
 orator picture it by metaphor or anecdote ? No — no. It 
 is of the heart, and appeals to the affections as no other as- 
 sociations can. And when after the lapse of generations, 
 the aged man or woman returns to the native home, al- 
 though grave stones alone indicate the names of the old 
 friends and acquaintances, the forms and faces of the de- 
 parted, again people the villages, walk the streets and utter 
 benedictions for the sons who remain to fill their places. 
 
 Is it among the high peaks of our New England moun- 
 tains, or upon its green valleys through which flow the 
 streams which have given industry and thrift more than 
 
their normal significance, or down by the waters of the 
 great ocean, where noble ships ride at anchor and the 
 beating waves forever chant the requiem for the dead, and 
 marches for the living, — the home never loses its won- 
 drous power of inspiration, but comes back as the ever re- 
 curring spot upon which the character of life received its 
 first and most durable impression. 
 
 It is not an idle or ceremonious matter when we revisit the 
 scenes of our nativity. Though the gray locks may encir- 
 cle our brow — though the elastic step may long since have 
 taken its departure ; though the mind from excessive labor 
 or lapse of time, has lost its relish for the current activities 
 of business and government, youth with its wild fancies — 
 bold determination, and almost buoyant step, comes back 
 to us as in the days of yore, making us again children on 
 the lawn, in the old church, at the school, or fishing in the 
 waters of the Bay. Native born and adopted citizens as- 
 semble to-day to dedicate this beautiful edifice erected 
 and paid for by the people of Falmouth, to the purposes 
 of civil liberty and popular government. 
 
 That it is in strange contrast with the rude structures 
 of the early settlers ; that its high walls, beautiful frescoes, 
 and convenient architectual arrangement, is significant of 
 prosperous homes and the cultivation of improved taste and 
 skill, in no way effects the connecting link between the 
 town hall, as the foundation institution of the people's gov- 
 ernment and the great government of the people which en- 
 folds in its benign and protecting embrace, fifty millions of 
 willing, cheerful and happy subjects. 
 
 Falmouth has not been destitute of the rich experience 
 which has come to most of our early Massachusetts settle- 
 ments. Her lands among the best, if not the best of Cape 
 Cod ; her sons developing the interests of commerce by 
 the early establishment of trade on the high seas ; repel- 
 
ling the invasion of a foreign foe which won the admira- 
 tion of the lion-hearted British officers, who in the royal 
 Nimrod, bombarded the town in the summer of eighteen 
 hundred and fourteen ; and at a later time when the flag of 
 the Republic was imperilled, going forth to subdue the 
 spirit of Rebellion, the seeds of which had been planted by 
 slavery and nurtured by the deep shadows which unrecog- 
 nized human independence threw over our developing civil- 
 ization ; have enabled her to maintain her prominence as a 
 municipality, and secure for her sons a record of manly 
 history, which will forever adorn the archives of the Great 
 Republic. 
 
 Through the vista of nearly two centuries, can the peo- 
 ple of Falmouth scan the growth and development of their 
 town. 
 
 Two centuries ! Could the mothers of Falmouth, in that 
 far off period, with their spinning wheels and hand looms 
 industriously manufacturing cloth and clothing for all the 
 members of the household — could the fathers, breaking the 
 land with heavy and expensive wrought iron ploughs and 
 harvesting with rude implements and weary labor, have 
 looked down this grand vista and seen the progress to be 
 made in the five generations which would succeed them, 
 they might have well considered their toil and labor the 
 seed sowing for a harvest of intelligence and wealth to be 
 gathered by their posterity, and the results woven into a 
 fabric which would adorn and aid in immortalizing a great 
 nation. 
 
 Let this be the thought of the hour — to trace the con- 
 nection between the past and the present — the perilous and 
 laborious days of the fathers, with the prosperous and 
 prospering days of the sons; the independence of indi- 
 vidual manhood and the prosperity of man and state and 
 
nation, with the independence of the Town Hall, the State 
 House, and the National Capitol. 
 
 Who of us, however broad his reading ; however thought- 
 ful his study ; however brilliant his imagination, can real- 
 ize with the most distant approximation the beaten path- 
 way of two centuries of New England life. 
 
 The wilderness ; the wild beasts of the forest; the wilder 
 men of the new world; the rude altars established for pub- 
 lic worship ; and the rude cabins which made the altars 
 possible, and protected and sheltered the neighborhood, 
 which -n two hundred years was to give tone and direction 
 to a nation of fifty millions of people ; whose voice could 
 be 'heard among all people as missionaries and teachers ; 
 whose humane institutions were to remodel the penal insti- 
 tutions of the world ; whose fiscal influence would depress 
 or elevate the Bourse of Paris, and the Exchequer of Eng- 
 land, whose flag would command the respect of all nations, 
 and whose legislation would liberalize the rule of Emper- 
 ors and Kings. 
 
 Look at that feeble band of men and women seeking 
 shelter, from European tyranny in the wilds of an unex- 
 plored continent. See their limited means ; their exposed 
 families , their abandonment of race and kindred, and com- 
 fortable homes, to establish the recognition of right to 
 individual manhood and citizenship. 
 
 The eye grows dim as we look adown the long passage 
 over which like an army of progress they have tramped — 
 tramped— tramped— with the rights of man on their ban- 
 ner, and the herald of truth, like the flame of fire, leading 
 the triumphant march. 
 
 The mind becomes abashed as through the long pages 
 of history it contemplates the small beginning ; the rapid 
 growth and the glorious progress secured by our American 
 culture. 
 
8 
 
 No hereditary right to reign ; no inheritance by King or 
 potentate as though the people were flocks and herds; 
 cessation of wars of conquest ; free development of com- 
 merce ; ample provision for the unfortunate poor, insane 
 and aged ; economy in the administration of government 
 and equal representation as the basis of government : — 
 
 This was the new gospel ; in the language of the great 
 English preacher, uttered in 1688: — "The dominion of 
 Kings changed for the dominion of laws, and the dominion 
 of priests to the dominion of reason and conscience." 
 
 In looking back through the progress of the generations, 
 what most impresses us of the highest consequence in the 
 growth we have had and the National influence we have 
 secured. 
 
 Is it not our m.aterial prosperity, evidences of which meet 
 us in almost every home, and to-day, for this town of 
 Falmouth, culminates in this convenient and beautiful Town 
 Hall .? 
 
 Material Prosperity. Write it out. Look at it and 
 read it carefully. It is the crowning glory of New England, 
 and has made possible the highest culture in church and 
 school and state. 
 
 Material Prosperity. What is society without it ! 
 Be ye fed and be ye clothed will do nothing for a hungry 
 man and a naked people. Talk to the hungry of religion, 
 of virtue, of humanity ; talk to the shivering mothers in vain 
 trying to give warmth to their freezing babes — will they hear 
 you } Do they listen ? Can they listen ? Pile up the 
 church spires to the clouds, fill in the walls with precious 
 stones, adorn the windows with marvelous designs, but do 
 they who are hungry and cold behold the beautiful archi- 
 tecture and admire the skill of the artist ! No, no ! Hunger 
 must be appeased ; cold must be held back ; and then, when 
 to the weakened body comes refreshing food and to the cold 
 
9 
 
 limbs the artificial heat which nature is unable to supply, the 
 temple may raise its high tower and the walls thereof may 
 be made to tell of the wondrous riches of the earth and the 
 artistic power of man, and then appreciating minds will 
 drink it in, and souls will be elevated and new creations 
 will be born to humanity. 
 
 Material prosperity underlies civilization and Christianity ; 
 it underlies humanity itself, for all human development 
 grows out of it. It is before the home — for the home de- 
 pends upon it — and the home precedes the school and the 
 church. 
 
 Material prosperity wherever we find it is piima facie 
 evidence of manhood. On the farm it advertises the virtue 
 and good habits of the occupant. The well-painted house, 
 the comfortable barn, the well-tilled fields all tell of a useful 
 life and manly cultivation. The home of the mechanic with 
 its garden of flowers or house plants arranged on portico or 
 window sill ; the neat and tidy wife and children — reflecting 
 shadows from polished floors ; the family library made up 
 of the Bible, the dictionary and a few useful and instruct- 
 ive books, supercede an introduction of the owner to give 
 assurance of his value as a citizen and his good habits as a 
 man. 
 
 The sailor who imperils his life upon the great ocean and 
 seeks the treasures of the deep waters, that homes may be 
 built up and communities enriched by a hazardous but in- 
 telligent industry, adds to his native land that which nature 
 having denied, skill and enterprise can alone supply. 
 
 Is it a wonder then that material success is the first 
 thought of young men and women ! Not only does home 
 depend upon it, but society, which represents aggregated 
 homes and builds roads and bridges, schoolhouses and 
 churches ; establishes laws and provides means for protect- 
 ing the well disposed from the vicious and lawless. 
 
10 
 
 No wonder that the young maiden, having finished her 
 technical school days and contemplating the future, looks 
 over the young men who compose the neighborhood, with 
 a business-like eye, determined, if possible, that her life 
 partner shall be thrifty and successful in the pursuits of 
 active life. 
 
 No wonder that the young man, as he leaves school, 
 thinks over his fitness for a trade or occupation, and con- 
 templates with anxiety the success which has" attended and 
 may attend his chosen employment. 
 
 No wonder that the luminous marks of success at the 
 forum, in the pulpit, in the halls of state, in the factory and 
 mill, on the farm, in mechanics and in art, here and there 
 lifting up their shining faces and receiving the admiration 
 and honor of the masses, distract and bewilder the youth 
 starting out on an untried pilgrimage over a way for which 
 no chart or compass can be supplied, and industry, intelli- 
 gence and virtue have proved the only successful safe- 
 guards. 
 
 No wonder that the end, so fascinating and brilliant, 
 should be desired without pursuing the uncertain and labo- 
 rious way by which the world's grand and noble specimens 
 of manhood have secured results. 
 
 But as true as '*no cross no crown," there is no well 
 developed manhood without persistent and skillfully planned 
 industry and patient, intelligent, plodding labor. 
 
 New England has been foremost in its schools ; in its 
 colleges ; in its churches ; in its beneficent and charitable 
 institutions ; in its gifts of teachers and missionaries at 
 home and abroad ; but its power has rested upon its patient 
 and persistent industry and its constant hunger for intel- 
 lectual and religious development. 
 
 Take out the intelligent industry from New England 
 and you take out all that has made and still continues to 
 
11 
 
 make her a beacon light to the nation and the world. To 
 attempt to attain the end without the struggle is as idle as 
 to attempt scholarship without study or wisdom without 
 observation. 
 
 A neighbor of my father's in a seaboard town, having 
 several ships engaged in the South American trade, and 
 being a man of wealth, desired to make captains of his sons, 
 who were too indolent to study the laws of navigation. He 
 accomplished his purpose, and secured insurance on his 
 ships, and safety for his cargoes, by employing well qualified 
 mariners for first mates and paying them captain's wages. 
 The sons, although captains by name, never knew the com- 
 pensation which comes from the labor preceding the suc- 
 cessful mastery of an occupation. 
 
 Such captains could never have positions among captains, 
 and would only exist as laughing stocks among practical 
 men. 
 
 Though endowed with a large inheritance, these sons, 
 after the death of their father, spent all their patrimony, 
 and died bankrupts in the endeavor to carry on a business 
 which they were too indolent to learn. 
 
 The rugged and sterile soil of New England promised but 
 little to the early settlers; but without wealth, without 
 distinction of birth, with plain manners and modest ambi- 
 tions, the fathers overcame rugged hills, sterile soil and un- 
 inviting climate by manly character. The man, superior 
 to every obstacle, made the surmounting of each hindrance 
 a stepping-stone the better to enable him to overcome every 
 succeeding one. 
 
 They found a wilderness ; they have left a land covered 
 with productive farms. They entered the realms of barbar- 
 ism, but with intelligent industry they permeated barbarism 
 with a higher and better civilization than the world had 
 ever known. Not wealth ; not social distinction ; not in- 
 
12 
 
 heritance of name or title, but character — real manhood 
 secured for them this grand conquest. This character our 
 fathers taught us to venerate — this manhood in the highest 
 example of sire and grandsire they have left for our emula- 
 tion. 
 
 Shall the success of the past typify the success of the 
 future*? The conditions have changed. Means have be- 
 come more abundant and inherited wealth is an every-day 
 matter. The chances of enterprise and manly develop- 
 ment lessen almost in direct rado with the amount of 
 wealth inherited. It is the young man born to fortune 
 about whom society should now be anxious. He who starts 
 with only his hands and brains finds himself courted neither 
 by the poor or rich. To him temptation is a comparative 
 stranger. His necessities require his time, and busy hours 
 are the woof of his life. The gambler and sharper stand 
 aloof, for in him there is no magnet of attraction. 
 
 But the youth born to fortune ! Look at him ! Hemmed 
 in from early infancy by the best of organized society, edu- 
 cated at the select schools, he starts out a full positioned 
 man on the very threshold of his active life. Jockeys make 
 love to him ; gamblers in the fashion of high-bred gentle- 
 men flatter him ; fashionable society courts him ; and on 
 every hand temptation in its most attractive form comes 
 forth to salute him and do him honor. If he resists temp- 
 tation and establishes habits of prudence and thrift, he de- 
 serves a thousand times more credit than the young man 
 born to no fortune but a healthy body and a sound mind. 
 
 Yet the struggle for wealth that the sons and daughters 
 may have large inheritances was never greater than to-day. 
 The thousands who have fallen ; the thousands who are fall- 
 ing,make no impression upon the thousands of fathers whose 
 ambition from month to month and year to year seems only 
 the accumulation of property. 
 
13 
 
 May we not stop a moment in this ambition for wealth 
 for which so many appear to have no use and which at the 
 best may paralyze the ambition and enterprise of children, 
 and see if the accumulators may not attain a higher useful- 
 ness by a more liberal expenditure in their own lifetime ! 
 How many a man has gone to his grave dwarfed in his 
 manhood by the scrimping expenditures made upon him- 
 self ! How many a wife has secured a premature decay 
 by an ever-continuing toil which a more liberal outlay of the 
 husband in support of a higher type of domestic policy 
 would have prevented. 
 
 How many times an over-anxious desire for accumulating 
 has prevented the accumulator from recognizing his first 
 great fiscal duty to society, the payment of an honest and 
 just tax ! thus debarring himself from doing his full part 
 toward the support of the educational institutions of his 
 country and paying his legal part of providing for the un- 
 fortunate poor and insane. No man can afford thus to im- 
 peril his manhood by withholding the discharge of that duty 
 which the acceptance of citizenship imposes. This is the 
 help wealth can give to its less fortunate neighbors without 
 humiliating them. 
 
 The danger to New England and the nation from inher- 
 ited wealth may not be great ; but the loss of enterprising 
 men who but for this illusion might add lustre and distinc- 
 tion to our American citizenship, cannot be a matter un- 
 worthy the serious thought of our New England fathers. 
 
 The great female orator of America, who has recently 
 won as high distinction in Europe as she has heretofore in 
 her own country, has a lecture on " What shall we do with 
 our girls .^" The interrogatory may be applied to our boys 
 as well. So solicitous are we that our'boys should do^well, 
 that we often find them at the threshold of manhood with 
 a capacity for no useful labor, and stinted and dwarfed by 
 
14 
 
 our over anxiety that their future will not be provided for. 
 We have given them an education ! Yes, that is pretty 
 generally done, if passing them through the stages of gram- 
 mar and high school and college will secure education. But 
 what then ? Education of books is well ; but it is a small 
 part of education for life. Even college education will fail 
 in earning bread and butter for a family, unless it is di- 
 rected to some practical end. 
 
 Colle.2:e education is not everything. It may be a help, 
 but it necessarily secures nothing in the w^ay of practical 
 work. Unless a man be apt to teach, as Horace Mann so 
 well said, it will not even make a teacher of him. 
 
 Fathers must not deceive themselves by believing that 
 everything is accomplished for their sons when by great in- 
 dustry, self-sacrifice and economy they have secured for 
 them a college education. 
 
 Fathers must not deceive their sons by allowing them to 
 believe that a mastery of Greek and Latin is a conquest 
 which will secure homesteads and full purses. 
 
 The tree that bears the golden fruit has a differ- 
 ent ROOT FROM THE VERBS OF DEAD LANGUAGES. 
 
 Some years since a graduate of a New England college 
 called at my office with a letter of introduction from a well 
 known professor. Asking the young man to be seated, I 
 asked him how I could serve him. He said he desired a 
 cashiership in a bank, and wished my assistance. Have 
 you ever been in a bank .? No, sir. What are your quali- 
 fications for so high a position } I have been through col- 
 lege. That is well. I stood high in mathematics. Tliat 
 is well, too, I replied. What more .? To my astonishment, 
 he said. Can anything more be needed ? I replied, O yes. 
 Going through college is well enough, but it is a small part 
 of the qualifications you need. I then told him he must 
 have a knowledge of the business. How can I get that ? 
 
15 
 
 By beginning at the bottom and working up. Do you 
 mean, said he, that I shall go into a bank and sweep and 
 dust ? I replied that was not necessary— but that in order 
 to establish his claim to a cashiership he must begin with a 
 clerkship and work up through the grades of positions until 
 his fitness was recognized by the directors. Said I, if 
 your father is a rich man and desires to establish a bank 
 and make you the cashier, he would have a perfect right to 
 do so— as he alone takes the risk— but when a Board of Di- 
 rectors, who are trustees of the property of stockholders, 
 select a cashier, the business public would never justify 
 them in taking a man who was not educated to the busi- 
 ness. 
 
 The young man left my office with a sorrowful counte- 
 nance, remarking that his college course had been of no 
 service to him, and that four years of valuable life had been 
 
 lost. 
 
 This is by no means an isolated case. Thousands ot 
 young men, who are graduated from our colleges, fail to 
 find out that text book knowledge has not necessarily a 
 money value until brought face to face with the unwelcome 
 
 discovery. 
 
 It is too bad in this busy and practical world to allow 
 any young m.an to think for a moment that he has not his 
 share of the work to perform. Out of usefulness comes 
 happiness. Not out of money ! not out of education ! not 
 out of an honored ancestry, however noble or grand ! but 
 out of usefulness ! Out of real life work, in a life in- 
 dustry by which the world will be made better, wiser, 
 strono-er! by which yokes will be lifted from burdened 
 necks'*! by which griefs will be assuaged and life made more 
 acceptable to the toiUng millions. 
 
 The frequent failures of college graduates to the attam- 
 ment of an ideal, is that their means of obtaining the ideal 
 
16 
 
 are not of a practical character, and the fault is largely in 
 home neglect. 
 
 The Technical School ; the Agricultural College, and to 
 an extent the scientific course, come in to supply a much 
 needed help. An acre of ground to plow and plant 
 
 AND HOE AND HARVEST, IS FULLY EQUAL TO A GYMNASIUM 
 FOR RECREATION, AND FAR BETTER FOR DISCIPLINE. 
 
 What shall we do with our young men ? Certainly the 
 least we can do is to give them the benefit of our own ex- 
 perience and observation. 
 
 We know that intelligent industry and economy have 
 made the wealth and wisdom of men. That if the product- 
 ive forces stopped, we should destroy ourselves as a nation 
 in a space of time easily measured by a generation. 
 
 That to grow and hold our present growth we must have 
 as active generations in the future as we have had in the 
 past. 
 
 Let it be written and published and preached, for the 
 pulpit is not too sacred a place for its utterance, that all 
 useful labor is honorable — that labor is necessary for human 
 progress and that the best means out of which to develop a 
 man is to educate him from first to last to the necessity of 
 usefulness by manly occupation. 
 
 He who is educated to a useful industry, lives in the very 
 air of thrift. Dependent upon no one — waiting upon no 
 one — self-poised he moves grandly along the pathway of life, 
 building and maintaining a comfortable home and making a 
 record of usefulness at every turn, his life is a varied field 
 upon which he reaps as with the sickle of the husbandman 
 an ever maturing harvest of human happiness. 
 
 The history of humanity has established beyond ques- 
 tion — 
 
 1st. That well developed manhood depends largely upon 
 an appreciation of physical activity. 
 
17 
 
 2d. That in order to secure the most valuable type of 
 physical activity, there must be a training of the physical 
 qualities of the man, which will respond to his studied and 
 carefully conceived ideal, 
 
 3d. That in the ratio of well directed physical activity is 
 the true growth of national greatness and prosperity. 
 
 No country offers to its people opportunities for better 
 homes than our own. Our diversified climate compassing 
 in its extent a temperature of every desirable character ; 
 our varied soil, adapted to the production of every fruit and 
 grain ; our high mountains, deep valleys and broad prairies, 
 giving a variety of landscape unsurpassed and opportunities 
 for homestead selections in accordance with the most varied 
 tastes and means, make our physical territory a rare inheri- 
 tance to our sons and a marvelous temptation to the rest- 
 less and more enterprising people of other nationalities. 
 
 Our condition as a people, to-day, is in wonderful con- 
 trast with every other civilized nation. 
 
 Prosperity is everywhere. From the most indifferent 
 workman who easily commands his dollar a day to the most 
 successful farmer, mechanic, manufacturer or merchant, who 
 has broadened his field of usefulness and activity, so that 
 neighborhoods and even large municipalities depend upon 
 his life ; and his income ranges far beyond his varied and 
 increasing wants. 
 
 For four years have the farmers of America been feeding 
 the people of Europe. That starvation would have existed 
 even on the shores of the Danube as it has existed among 
 the people of the far East had not the products of Ameri- 
 can agriculture been within their reach, is not a statement 
 admitting of doubt or question. 
 
 The falling off of our exports of grain is what every care- 
 ful observer of trade has long expected. Better harvests 
 
18 
 
 abroad lessen the temporary demands for our exports of 
 agricultural products. 
 
 But the prosperity of American agriculture is not depend- 
 ent upon the starving people of Ireland, England or Russia. 
 
 The education of our people is constantly developing new 
 uses to which our soil products can be devoted. Corn is 
 converted by the process of fermentation to grape sugar, 
 and the day is not far distant when art will devise the pro- 
 cess by which as valuable a granulated sugar shall be made 
 of the corn stalk as is now made from the sugar cane. When 
 that shall be discovered, the increased value of corn product 
 is a matter beyond the possibility of estimation. Already 
 the production of glucose and grape sugar have added large- 
 ly to the value of this great American staple. Recently, 
 directly from the corn, a process of manufacturing lactic 
 acid has been discovered — and if this is a practical success, 
 as there is every reason now for believing it is, a new and 
 vast field will be opened to the American corn raiser and^ a 
 new industry presented to our people of supplying the world 
 at a cheap rate with a chemical substance that will entirely 
 supercede cream of tartar. 
 
 The sugar beet culture is still in its infancy — but enough 
 has been established to satisfy the most incredulous observ- 
 er, that the few remaining obstacles in the way of com- 
 plete triumph will soon be overcome. 
 
 Our new processes of manufacturing flour have greatly 
 stimulated the wheat culture of the country, and are mak- 
 ing our American wheat, which contains a larger proportion 
 of starch than any wheat produced on the Continent of 
 Europe, an indispensable luxury in every home of wealth in 
 the civilized world. 
 
 Our cotton crop compasses every variety of the raw mate- 
 rial, and although England has expended millions in her 
 efforts to make her mills independent of our Southern 
 
19 
 
 planters, and has given utterance time and again to the at- 
 tainment of an assured success, she is no nearer independ- 
 ence than she was before the great Rebellion. 
 
 Never was the prospect of a great ingathering harvest ot 
 compensation better for the cotton planter of the South 
 than in the year eighteen hundred and eighty-one. 
 
 The cattle products of Texas, New Mexico and the more 
 distant States and territories of America have established 
 their markets not only in the Western, Middle and Eastern 
 States but throughout England and Germany. This busi- 
 ness, already making immense traffic for our railroads and 
 steamships and taking high rank among our exports, is des- 
 tined to be one of the most important fields which Ameri- 
 can industry has undertaken to explore. It cannot be 
 measured. No return of frequent rains; no patronage of 
 .government by subsidy or land grant; no education^ by 
 tchool or Agricultural College, can enable the older nations 
 of Europe to compete with America in this immeasurable 
 business which is now so rapidly developing. 
 
 Let us o-ive one thought to the industry and the pros- 
 pects of our New England manufactures. No prosperity 
 of the past can yet challenge comparison with the prosperity 
 of to-day. Mill after mill has been reared and the waters of 
 our New Englandrivers have been exhausted in the ability to 
 furnish power for the increasing industry and enterprise of 
 our people. Our cotton and woolen manufactures find a 
 market in every part of our own country, and to a limited 
 extent compete with the products of England, Germany and 
 
 ^ The'products from cotton meet the wants and necessities 
 of all people in either torrid or temperate zones ; and the 
 manufacture of cotton goods will never ^a-l of a -an^; 
 except from the causes of some temporary, abnoimal reac- 
 tion The worid opens to the American cotton manufac- 
 
20 
 
 turer the most brilliant opportunities for the successful man- 
 ufacture of finer and more costly goods than any that our 
 mills have as yet undertaken. That the skill of the Amer- 
 ican inventor will before long enable America to dictate to 
 the world the cheap manufacture of fine cotton as success- 
 fully as it now dictates the manufacture of Brussels carpet-, 
 ing, depends only upon our continued ability to keep our 
 young men to the study of practical industries and from the 
 temptations of luxury and idleness. 
 
 Virginia and Georgia may establish their cotton mills ; 
 Northern capital may seek an outlet in the building of mills 
 in all the cotton-producing States of the South ; but the 
 mill owners of New England will have nothing to fear until 
 the cotton States of the South are able to take on the invig- 
 orating climate ol New England, which is a perpetual stim- 
 ulator of patient industry and ingenious contrivance. Our 
 capitalists will help them build their mills ; our mechanics 
 will furnish them their machinery; but nature herself can- 
 not give them our mountain breezes and the invigoration 
 which comes from the rugged climate of our New England 
 homes. 
 
 That the coarser products of the mill may not be manu- 
 factured to advantage, on the soil of the cotton-raising States 
 of the South, no observing man would question — but New 
 England has the vantage ground for all the finer produc- 
 tions of the mill and loom, and the qualities of its climate 
 must always secure for it the vantage ground of all that 
 depends upon patient and persistent industry. 
 
 Our commerce, once so prosperous, has not yet recov- 
 ered from the blow it received during the suppression of 
 the Rebellion. But it is on the way to renewed health 
 and life. Government will yet come to the aid of the mer- 
 chant, and subsidies for ships will be considered as much a 
 part of governmental duty in encouraging the art of ship 
 
21 
 
 building, as have been subsidies for railroads to aid our in- 
 ternal commerce. Though for a brief time this sceptre of 
 dominion has passed into other hands, the race will be to 
 the nation, which secures culture for the largest proportion 
 of its people. The New England fisheries will, as in days 
 of old, be stimulated to a new life by the same legitimate 
 
 means. 
 
 New England need have no fears of her mills lying idle 
 or of her homes becoming desolate so long as she adheres 
 to the policy of frugality and industry, which successive 
 generations of the fathers engrafted upon the sons. 
 
 "Keep well to the front" has been a maxim we have well 
 comprehended. The living men are front ; the well men 
 are front ; the sturdy New England men are front ; in the 
 rear are the idle and the ignorant, and in their companion- 
 ship there is nothing of encouragement to civilization or 
 
 the world. . 
 
 Necessity is the mother of invention is a maxim which 
 the experience and observation of men enable them thor- 
 oucrhly to endorse. The maxim apparently originated in a 
 o-reat physical necessity, such a necessity perhaps as seldom 
 Tn our day comes to our New England. But with physical 
 wants well supplied, we have a larger and broader and ever 
 broadening field upon which, as we look out, we see the 
 ever--rowing and ever-increasing wants of society and the 
 world— in literature, in art, in mechanics, in agriculture— 
 and the call is no less loud to us who enjoy the work of the 
 skilled hands and trained minds of our predecessors and 
 contemporaries to subdue the soil, bind the streams, chain 
 the winds, store up the lightning, extend the power of 
 steam, and to utilize the treasures of the earth, than to the 
 master minds who have accomplished the grand results of 
 which our civilization may well be proud. 
 
 Art is worth nothing to the man who fails to comprehend 
 
22 
 
 it. The various industries of life, simple as they may seem, 
 are Chinese puzzles to the casual observer, who in his igno- 
 rance may think them as transparent as the atmosphere. 
 
 It is to disabuse the mind of the casual observer of this 
 dangerous conclusion and to bring all our youth to the com- 
 prehension of the fact that there is no little and unimport- 
 ant thing in life, and that however insignificant may look 
 the beginning, there is no climber who has yet even ap. 
 proximated the top round of the ladder upon which he has 
 started to ascend, that we need this continuous and ever- 
 lasting preaching by word and by illustration. 
 
 A very wealthy gentleman, whose son, some years since, 
 graduated at Harvard, told me this item in his domestic 
 history : " A few months before the graduation of my son, 
 he said to me, * Father, I want to go into business and I 
 would like to have your judgment of the business I had bet- 
 ter engage in.'" 
 
 The father replied : " I hoped you would be a profession- 
 al and not a business man." 
 
 Said the son : " I have looked the whole field over, and 
 some active business will alone satisfy me. Now, what can 
 I do }" After thinking the matter over for several days, 
 the father again interrogated the son upon his plans for the 
 future. " I am no less determined," said he ; " I must and 
 will learn a business." After considerable thought the 
 father said : " The wool business is a good business ; how 
 would you like that ?" ''Very well," said the son. " But 
 you will be obliged to give months and perhaps years of 
 time to make yourself master of it." " Very well ; I am 
 prepared." " You will have to work with the wool-sorters, 
 in attic stories, and be the companion of illiterate and ill- 
 bred men." " I am ready," said the son. " You will have 
 to put on overalls and clothe yourself in harmony with your 
 work." '' I am good for that, too," said the son. 
 
23 
 
 Meeting a prominent wool merchant shortly afterwards 
 the father asked him if he had a place for a boy in his store. 
 " I am overrun with applications," responded the merchant. 
 '' I have a son," continued the father, " who is determined 
 to learn the wool business, and I desire you take him. " Oh," 
 said the merchant, " I could do nothing with your boy." 
 '* He is not much of a boy," said the father; "he is twenty- 
 three years of age and has been graduated at Harvard." 
 " Why," said the merchant, " I could do nothing for him 
 unless he would go into the attic and work with the wool- 
 sorters, and your son would not do that." 
 
 Another conference was held between the father and the 
 son, and the result was the son put on his overalls, went to 
 work with the wool-sorters in the loft of the store, and now 
 three years have passed— he is in the valley of the Missis- 
 sippi with a hundred thousand dollars at his command, pur- 
 chasing wool for his employers, and in a few years his 
 knowledge and skill will make him indispensible to the 
 house, and he will become a junior partner. 
 
 This is the material out of which New England thrift has 
 been made. It is still with us and of us and in us. Let us 
 keep it. Let us foster it. Let us not forget that neither 
 wealth or grand surroundings, mastery of Greek or Roman 
 languages, fine address or cultivated manner, or any other 
 sup'erstructure however adorning or inviting, can supply the 
 bed-rock of individual or national greatness, upon which all 
 truly successful men must build and national prosperity 
 can alone be established. 
 
 To-day citizens of Falmouth, by sacred and holy prayer ; 
 by the presence of His Excellency, the Governor of the 
 Commonwealth ; by the melody of music and song ; by the 
 assemblage of the people in the many renewed expressions 
 of their right to self-government, do we dedicate this beau- 
 tiful town hall to the rights of citizenship as laid down by 
 
24 
 
 the fathers — as better understood by their sons in the un 
 folding progress of civilization and Christianity, and to th( 
 still further unfolding which the future may have in ston 
 for the sons who are to succeed us. 
 
 In this hall may the discussion of the great civil polity o 
 the Town, the State and the Nation be forever free. Ma3 
 no hot and excited language mar the polish and beauty o 
 self-respect, or respect for contemporaries whose right: 
 to be heard are always equal with our own. 
 
 And if in the progress of American citizenship, nev 
 fields may be opened ; new alliances established, and j 
 broader usefulness developed, may this Hall be foreve] 
 the sacred arena, where the barometer of government shal' 
 indicate the recognition of the highest individual liberty 
 and the highest individual responsibility. 
 
 And let it be inserted on banner and wall ; taught in th( 
 home, the school, from the rostrum and pulpit — educatec 
 industry is the protection of youth — the glory of manhood 
 the security of American Institutions, and the basis o 
 national wealth and prosperity. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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