country, moral as well as physical, are to be found in the pursuits of agriculture, and in those mechanical and commercial occupations which naturally grow up from the circumstances of the people. If we are to believe the advocates of free trade, the morals and general condition of the people of this country were in a better state before the introduction of extensive manufactures in the Northern and Eastern States, than those which now exist in the manufacturing districts. Although this subject has frequently attracted the attention of writers and speakers in favor of protection, and the advantages of manufactures with regard to their influence on the morals and circumstances of the people in their vicinity shown; we do not think it has been sufficiently considered and displayed to the people. We propose to devote a short space to a comparison of the present, with the former condition of the people in one of the most important manufacturing localities. The State of Rhode-Island exhibits, in the most striking form, the vast advantages to be derived from a multiplicity of industrial pursuits, and is entitled to the credit of having been the first to introduce into the United States the immense advantages derived from labor-saving machinery. Before noticing the present prosperous condition of the State, it will be interesting to inquire what were its circumstances and character in the early part of the present century, and before the extensive introduction of labor-saving machinery. The population of the State, according to the three first enumerations taken by the United States, was as follows: In 1790, 68,825; in 1800, 69,122; in 1810, 76,931. The late Dr. Timothy Dwight, President of Yale College, in his "Travels in New-England," in the year 1800, has the following observations: - "From the circumstances of its early settlement, Rhode-Island became naturally the resort, not only of such adventurers as harmonized with them (the original colonists) in religious opinions, but of most of those who were discontented and restless. A general aggregation, originated by a great variety of incidental causes, spread over the State, and occupied the whole of its territory. No single or regular scheme of colonization was pursued. No common object united the immigrants; and no common character could be traced through the In such casual collections of mankind, it is an almost necessary consequence of their junction in society, that their peculiar religious opinions are held with less and less tenacity; that concessions mass. are gradually and insensibly made by each to each; that each class respects its own doctrines those of others; and that all religious doctrines less, and becomes more and more indifferent to lose their influence, until the community becomes dispossessed of that beneficent efficacy which is ever to be expected from the gospel, wherever it is cordially believed by an undivided body of men. "The inhabitants of this State, in opposition to the rest of their New-England brethren, have uniformly refused to support the public worship of God by law, or, in other words, to make a legal provision for the support of ministers and churches. for his maintenance they have placed on the same A contract between a minister and his congregation footing as contracts made at the gaming table. Hence, except in their large towns, a minister liberally educated cannot often be found. Hence, the places of such ministers are filled by plain, ignorant Scriptures, and murder arguments and language. individuals. They pervert the meaning of the They are destitute of dignity, propriety, and candor; coarse and clownish in their manners; uncouth in their elocution; and in their discourses clumsy and ridiculous. Next to a wicked ministry, the greatest evil which can befall the Church is a weak ministry. The churches in Providence and Newport I have described. Those which I have seen in the country towns appear like badly-built and decayed barns. is merely a day of visiting and sport. Many of the "The Sabbath, with a great part of this people, inhabitants have customarily devoted it to labor. A considerable number of persons in the trading towns, Providence excepted, have been deeply engaged in the slave-trade. Some of the missionary societies have in their proceedings considered RhodeIsland as missionary ground. course. "Schools usually go parallel with ministers and churches. Here, certainly, they move in the same lately been made to establish academies, (of which, Exclusive of a few attempts which have I believe, one, two, or three have succeeded,) and some efforts which are made in the principal towns, schools in this State can hardly be said to exist. The gentlemen with whom I conversed on reprobation of the conduct of the State, in strong this subject expressed their mortification, and their terms, but they seemed to be hopeless concerning a reformation. Without churches, men will be vicious of course; without schools, they will be ignorant; and ignorance and vice are sufficiently melancholy characteristics of the people in whom they are united. "It is not impossible, perhaps not improbable, that the energy awakened in this State by the diffusion of manufactures, may be productive of some beneficial consequences both to learning and religion. The wealth of the inhabitants is visibly increasing with rapidity, and will probably continue to increase through an indefinite period. Wealth, wherever it is spread, generates, of course, the desire of character; and this passion regularly stimulates mankind to the use of those means by which it may be gratified. The first step towards giving character to children is to give them at least a decent education; and this step is always taken whenever wealth begins to be diffused. The next is not uncommonly the building of churches; and the next the settlement and support of ministers, such, I mean, as are qualified to discharge the duties of the sacred office. Should this be the course of events in Rhode-Island, it is hardly possible that the character of the inhabitants at large should not be essentially meliorated." To these remarks of Dr. Dwight, the editor of his work, published in 1822, adds the following: "These observations were made in the year 1800. Since that time, the prediction of the writer has, to a considerable extent, been fulfilled. The manufacturing establishments of this State have been enlarged and multiplied, and the wealth of the inhabitants increased in a more rapid manner than in any other part of New-England. With the acquisition of property, the people, particularly in the large towns, appear to have acquired more liberal views concerning the importance of learning to the community.” The following extract from Morse's Geography, published in 1805, confirms Dr. Dwight's account of the state of society in Rhode-Island, in the early part of this century: "The literature of this State is confined principally to the towns of Newport and Providence. There are men of learning and abilities scattered throughout the State, but they are rare. The bulk of the inhabitants in other parts of the State are involved in greater ignorance perhaps than in most other parts of New-England. A law a few years since was made, establishing town schools through the State, but was found unpopular and repealed. There are few clergymen in the State, excepting in Providence and Newport. * * * In the whole region west of Providence river, a schoolhouse or meeting-house is rarely found; not a quarter part have a Bible in their houses, and a great portion of the people are unable to read or write." With regard to the trade and commerce of the State, Morse remarks: "Before the war of the Revolution, the merchants in Rhode-Island imported from Great Britain, dry goods; from Africa, slaves; from the West Indies, sugars, coffee and molasses; and from the neighboring colonies, lumber and provisions. With the bills which they obtained in Surinam and the Dutch West Indies they paid their merchants in England. Their sugars they carried to Holland; the slaves from Africa they carried to the West Indies, together with the lumber and provisions procured from their neighbors; the rum distilled from the molasses was carried to Africa to purchase negroes; with their dry goods from England they trafficked with the neighboring colonies. By this kind of circuitous commerce they subsisted and grew rich. But the Revolutionary War and some other events have | had a great, and in most respects an injurious effect upon the trade of this State. The slavetrade, which was a source of wealth to many of the people, has happily been abolished. The Legislature have passed a law prohibiting ships from going to Africa for slaves, and selling them in the West India islands. The town of Bristol carries on a considerable trade to Africa, the West Indies, and to different parts of the United States. But by far the greater part of the commerce of the State is at present carried on by the inhabitants of the flourishing town of Providence. In sail of vessels, measuring 11,942 tons. The tonnage June, 1791, there were belonging to this port 129 of the whole State amounts to between 26,000 and 27,000 tons. The exports from the State are flaxseed, lumber, horses, cattle, beef, pork, fish, poultry, onions, butter, cheese, barley and other grain, spirits, and cotton and linen manufactures. branch of business. The inhabitants are advancing in the manufacturing A cotton manufactory has been erected at Providence, which from present prospects will answer the expectations of the proprietors. Jeans, fustians, denims, thick-sets, velvets, &c., are here manufactured and sent to the Southdifferent parts of this State for exportation. Other manufactures are those of iron, spirits, paper, wool and cotton cards, &c. Newport, famed for the beauty of its situation and the salubrity of its climate, now wears the gloomy aspect of decay. Circumstance strongly mark out this place as a convenient and proper situation for extensive manufactures. Should the gentlemen of fortune turn heir capital into this channel, they would be instrumental in giving employment and bread to thousands of now unhappy people, and of reviving the former importance of their beautiful town.” ern States. Linen and tow cloths are made in These extracts are sufficient to show the condition of Rhode-Island under the commercial system which formerly prevailed in the colony and State, and before the attention of the people was particularly turned to manufactures, as the main source of occupation and prosperity which they have since found it, and which is now the main dependence of the people for support. The former moral and religious character of the people, as described by Doctors Dwight and Morse, is probably somewhat exaggerated by the prejudices of those writers, but there can be no doubt of the low state of education, religion and morals in the State, compared with other parts of New-England; and it is curious to notice that Dr. Dwight looked to the establishment of manufactures as a means by which the moral condition of the people might be improved. The gradual improvement of the condition and the present elevated character of the population of RhodeIsland, in every point of view, are remarkable proofs of the sagacity of Dr. Dwight, and of the accuracy of his prediction on the subject. the mills of Arkwright and Strutt, when Mr. Slater left England. These schools, the Before comparing the present condition first of the kind in America, are still conof the State with that of the same half a tinued at Pawtucket. They have been copcentury since, it will be interesting to notice ied and extended with the extension of the the introduction of the cotton manufacture cotton manufacture in this country. and they into Rhode-Island, and its gradual progress have prompted the establishment of similar for a series of years. The commencement of schools in our seaport towns and in foreign cotton spinning in the State dates as early countries. It was from Pawtucket that they as the year 1788, when Daniel Anthony and were introduced into Providence in 1815, others, of Providence established the business by the young men of the latter place, one in a small way. This enterprise was followed of whom had been a clerk with Mr. Slater. by a few others, but every attempt to spin In addition to these schools for Sunday incotton by water power previous to 1790 struction, the establishment and support of proved abortive. In that year the Arkwright common day schools was promoted at machinery was introduced by Samuel Slater, all the manufactories in which Mr. Slater who had recently arrived from England. It was interested; and in some cases the teachwas first put in operation at Pawtucket, and ers were wholly paid by himself. Regular the manufactory is referred to by Hamilton, and stated public worship also was liberally in his report on manufactures in December, supported at those points where the people 1791, as having "the merit of being the could be most conveniently assembled. first in introducing into the United States "The introduction of manufacturing was the celebrated cotton mill," (meaning Ark- thus," says Mr. White, in his Life of Slater, wright's patent.) Some of Mr. Slater's first" in every place a harbinger of moral and inyarn, and some of the first cotton cloth made in America, from the same warp, was sent to the Secretary of the Treasury, (Hamilton,) in October, 1791. As to the impediments under which this business labored, Mr. Moses Brown, a partner of Slater, observes: "No encouragement has been given by any laws of this State, nor by any donations of any society or individuals, but wholly begun, carried on, and thus far perfected, at private expense." The biographer of Slater says he had never heard of any pecuniary advantage conferred on Mr. Slater, for his introducing the cotton manufacture, or for his establishing it on a permanent basis; but his own money and time were pledged to the object. It is stated on good authority that nearly all the cotton manufactories in the United States, from 1791 to 1805, were built under the direction of men who had acquired their art or skill in building machinery in Mr. Slater's employ. tellectual improvement to the inhabitants of the vicinage, and the numerous operatives from remote and secluded parts of the country, attracted to the manufacturing villages by the employment, comforts, and conveniences which they afforded. Hundreds of families of the latter description, originally from places where the general poverty had precluded schools and public worship, brought up illiterate, and without religious instruction, and disorderly and vicious, in consequence of their lack of regular employment, have been transplanted to these new creations of skill and enterprise; and by the ameliorating effects of study, industry, and instruction, have been reclaimed, civilized, Christianized. Not a few of them have accumulated and saved, by close application and moderate economy, very handsome estates. Indeed, such have been the blessed results of concentrating and giving employment to a population formerly conOn the establishment of his first cotton sidered almost useless to the community, mill, Mr. Slater introduced among the labor- that there is among our manufacturing popers therein, such regulations as his previous ulation, at this moment, a greater number of observations of establishments in Derbyshire, males, of from twenty to thirty years old, England, had shown to be useful and appli- who are worth from $300 to $1,000 each, cable to the circumstances of an American and of marriageable females worth from $100 population. Among these was the system to $800 each, than can be found in any of Sunday-school instruction, which had population out of the manufacturing villabeen for some time in full operation at all ges." (This was in 1836.) The same writer further remarks : also at the same time located in Massachusetts, within 30 miles of Providence, 20 cot"The impulse given to industry and production ton mills, with 17,371 spindles in operation, by the cotton manufacture has not been confined to one branch of business alone, but has been felt and a capacity for 45,438 spindles. Each in every sort of employment useful to the com- spindle would then produce yarn enough munity. We need not, in this place, enlarge upon weekly to make two and a half yards of the close affinity and mutual dependence of these cloth, of the value of 30 cents per yard, the various employments; they are obvious to every mind which has acquired the habit of tracing average price at that time. The number of results to their causes in the endless relations of spindles then in operation in the vicinity of society. As a general fact it is undoubtedly true, Providence produced, therefore, sufficient that the advance of our country in the production yarn, when wove, to make in each week and manufacture of wool and iron has been greatly 128,635 yards of cloth, worth $38,590-or accelerated by the cotton manufacture; and that those branches of industry have always been over two millions of dollars annually. This deeply affected by the temporary reverses which shows the immense importance of the cotton this branch has experienced. Mr. Slater was for manufacture, even in its infancy, previous to many years and at the time of his death concerned the war of 1812. in woollen and iron, as well as cotton manufactoThe war found the American people desries; and his observation and sagacity never suffered him to question the identity of their inter- titute of the means of supplying themselves, ests. He always maintained that legislative pro- not merely with blankets for their soldiers, tection would be beneficial to himself as well as but a vast variety of other articles of necesothers to those already established in business sity and comfort. Our citizens entered on and having ample capital, as to those who were the business of manufactures with great just beginning and with little or no capital. Events have fully sustained these views. The energy and enterprise; invested in them fostering protection of the government, up to the many millions of capital; and having, durelection of President Jackson, brought forwarding the two and a half years while the war and established many adventurers who had begun continued, the domestic market secured to without money or skill, but have since acquired both; whilst those who preceded them in busi- them, they succeeded beyond expectation. ness are, generally, as far in advance of them as Never was there a prouder display of the they were before. In the measures adopted by power of industry than was afforded on this the manufacturing districts of our country to ob- occasion. Unaided by the expenditure of tain this protection, Mr. Slater was ever prominent and efficient." money by Government, except in the way of necessary contracts, they attained in two or Small manufactories spread in Rhode-Is-three years a degree of maturity in some land about the year 1807, and improve- branches of manufactures which required ments began to be introduced. Manufac- centuries in England, France, and Prussia, turing enterprise was greatly promoted by and cost their governments large sums, in the non-importation and other restrictive the shape of bounties, premiums, and drawacts of Congress during Jefferson's and Mad-backs, with the fostering aid of privileges ison's administrations, which contributed, of and immunities bestowed on the manufaccourse, to the scarcity and high prices of turers. In the language of the report of a British goods. The war of 1812 taught the society of the friends of manufactures, made Americans to rely upon their own resources in 1817:for support, and the results of the lesson then learned were the erection of manufacturing establishments in almost every nook and corner of the settled parts of the Eastern and Middle States-affording sure markets for the produce of the flocks and fields of the Northern farmer, and increasing the demand for the staple of the Southern planter. At the beginning of the war in 1812, there were in operation in RhodeIsland, within 30 miles of Providence, 33 cotton mills, with 30,663 spindles, and a capacity for 56,246 spindles. There were rivalled foreign productions, and the nation with "In a short three years the produce of our looms which we were contending felt more alarm from the produce of our manufactures than she did from the success of our arms. But peace came. While we were at war, the warehouses of England were of market had enabled her to purchase at a deprefilled with the produce of the labor which a loss ciated price. The moment intercourse between the two countries was opened, her hoarded stores were thrown upon us, and we were deluged with the manufactures which had been waiting the event. They could be sold without profit, because the foreign manufacturer thought himself fortunate if he could realize the capital which he had been obliged to expend, to support his establishment | able auspices. The country was generally while there was no sale for his wares. But he was prosperous where the influence of manufaccontent to bear a loss, because, in the words of an English statesman, 'It was well worth while to tures could be felt. It was estimated that incur a loss upon the first exportation, in order, by sixty millions of dollars had been invested the glut, to stifle in the cradle those rising manu- in manufacturing establishments, which were factures in the United States which the war had spread over the face of the land, diffusing forced into existence.' It would have been surprising, employment and comforts among thousands indeed, if our infant manufactures, the establishment of which had generally exhausted the capi- of industrious people. Peace, with all its tals of those who embarked in them, could have blessings, was, however, fraught with desustained themselves under such circumstances, struction to the hopes of a considerable without any aid or support from the Government, portion of the manufacturers. The double without any means of countervailing the effects of the sacrifices which foreigners were willing to duties on imports had been imposed with a make for their destruction. How were they to limitation to one year after the close of the maintain themselves? It was impossible, many war. They were repealed, and a new tariff of them sunk. The attention of the Government enacted in 1816. Although it recognized the was too ardently directed, during the war, to other doctrine of protection, that tariff was insuffiobjects, to perceive the policy or necessity of that protection which the manufacturing interest did cient to sustain the manufacturing interest not appear to want." generally. From year to year after that time, ruin spread among the manufacturers, and a large proportion of them were reduced to bankruptcy. The progress of the State of RhodeIsland was of course slow during a series of years, and until the revival of industry by the tariff of 1824, followed by that of 1828. Since the permanent establishment of manufactures by the protective system, RhodeIsland has steadily advanced in population and wealth; its prosperity, of course, checked by every advance towards free trade in the legislation of Congress, adverse to national industry. The following shows the progressive movement of the population of the State since the first United States' census, in 1790: A very favorable impression, in favor of domestic manufactures, was every where manifested at the conclusion of the war of 1812. Mr. Jefferson had changed his views on the subject, and expressed himself as follows: "To be independent for the comforts of life, we must fabricate them ourselves. We must now place the manufacturer by the side of the agriculturist. Experience has taught me that manufactures are as necessary to our independence as our comfort." Year. 1790, Decennial increase. Numeral. Per cent. Population. 1800,... 69,122 297 00.4 1810, 77,031 7,909 11.4 1820, 83,059 6,028 7.8 1830,... Presidents Madison and Monroe, in their messages to Congress, and on other occasions, recommended the encouragement of manufactures by adequate protection. The tour of President Monroe to New-England made a very favorable impression on his mind with regard to the resources of the country, and its adaptation to manufacturing operations. He was received at Pawtucket by Mr. Slater, who showed and explained to him the frames by which he had spun his first cotton, and stated the progress of the business, which had raised that obscure hamlet to the condition of a flourishing town. The change was remarkable that had taken place during the contest with Great Britain. Providence, and Rhode-Island in general, had received an impetus which contributed, more than any other cause, to buildings banks, the same year, the deposits up a large and populous city, and to raise a amounted to $1,054,263. The amount of comparatively small State to wealth and capital invested in manufactures in 1840 was importance. $10,696,136. The war of 1812 was closed under favor The valuation of taxable property in the State in 1849 was $70,289,990 viz. : real estate, $48,956,829; personal ditto, $21,333,161. The increase of taxable property from 1796 to 1832 was $17,140,000, and from 1833 to 1849 the increase was $37,650,000. The amount of banking capital in 1849 was $11,300,000. In the sav The most remarkable improvement has |