The influence of a public library is contingent upon many circumstances—its community, its finances, and largely upon its management. Possibilities which may be developed in one library, in another remain unnoticed; while something of equal importance is made of incalculable benefit to its own community. Thus, though working on a general principle, each library independently works out the problem of the greatest good to the greatest number of its own patrons. Happily, therefore, there is no cause for the rivalry and jealousies that disturb the harmony of so many fraternities.
It is my pleasure and privilege to live in a manufacturing community; to watch the development of practical ideas; to follow the progress of mechanical improvement, and witness with pride their results, for the distinctive feature of Pawtucket is the variety of its industries.
We remember with pride our parentage and the honor due to it; but surely when Samuel Slater, after a weary time of toil and discouragement, perfected the first power machinery for cotton spinning in this country, and with a pardonable pride saw it in successful operation in the first bona fide cotton mill in the United States, which still stands in the centre of our city—(I speak with authority though I am fully aware that this is a case parallel to the “Seven Grecian cities striving for Homer dead.”)—When, as I said, this was accomplished in 1791, there was no power of the imagination that could have foreseen the change from the little mill village on the Blackstone River, with its few hundred inhabitants, to the present city of 25,000, 13,000 of whom are engaged in industrial pursuits, its 70 schools, its 600 manufacturing establishments, embracing the greatest variety of industries.
But Pawtucket is only one of many thriving manufacturing communities.
Waltham, Mass., the adoptive parent of the American Watch Co., which had in 1865 a population of but 7,000, now numbers over 16,000, with not less than 7,000 employés, 2,500 of whom alone are employed by the American Watch Co.
Lowell, Mass., according to the census of 1883, had a population of 66,000, one third of whom were employed in its 300 manufactories.
Manchester, N.H., with a population of 40,000, employs 15,000 persons in its 102 manufactories.
And so I might go on enumerating special statistics, but these are simply representative communities. It is sufficient for my purpose to say that there are in the United States about 254,000 manufacturing establishments, employing nearly 3,000,000 persons, at an average wage of $1.15 per working day.
It is to this great class that we look for much of the prosperity of our country; for we find that the value of the product of the manufactures of the United States for the last ten years was $5,400,000,000.