makers two shillings a dozen for heels, which were most probably of wood. Among the trades enumerated were tanners, skinners, glovers, pattern-makers, saddlers, collar-makers, book-binders, and carriage-makers. In In the Southern Provinces, the differentiation of labor was a slower process than in the more enterprising Eastern States. The cattle were left to provide principally for themselves. the account written by Mr. Perry, in 1731, he states that cattle were numerous, but that there was not a hovel in all the country for their shelter, and that, in consequence, ten thousand horned cattle died from exposure during the previous winter. The planters did not know how to mow or to provide fodder. Butter was 7s. 6d. a pound, and the winter before, 12s. The hides were exported raw, or thrown away. Imported shoes were sold at 10s. a pair, and ox hides at 20s. each. Neither are they destitute of the means to tan them, for they make very good lime with oyster shells, and the bark of oak trees is so plentiful that it costs but the trouble of gathering. They want, therefore, only a sufficient number of good tanners and shoemakers. I might say the same of leather-dressers, since they send every year to England alone 200,000 deer-skins undrest. Yet Carolina produces oker naturally, and good Fish oyle may be had from New York or New England very cheap, so that they might be drest and made up into Breeches. in the country; for which these skins are very proper, being warm in winter and cool in summer." THE EXTENSION OF THE SETTLEMENTS. From these settlements upon the coast, the population gradually extended inland, following generally the course of the rivers, and carrying their agricultural pursuits into the valleys. In many of the various articles of this work upon the position of the special industries, the history of their foundation and growth will be found more in detail. One of the great obstacles in the way of the more rapid increase of the country was the bad state of the roads, and the necessarily slow condition of the intercommunication. It was not until the discovery of the use of steam, and its application to railroads, that civilization in any country had the means at its disposal for the circulation of its men or its products, with the certainty or rapidity which are absolutely necessary. for the fullest development of its resources. METHODS OF COMMUNICATION. Up to this time the improvement in the modes of communication underwent the same gradual course which has marked elsewhere the passage of society to its present phase of organization. About the centres of population the roads were improved. Stages were introduced, canals came into use, and the isolation of small communities began to give way before larger national sympathies and more extended interests. The war of the revolution had much to do with introducing and organizing a national spirit among the colonies. In the armies, the men from different sections met each other, and learned to supplant their sectional jealousies with a mutual respect and a wider conception of a national destiny. With the formation of a national Congress, the necessity for a more intimate union of the states than that of the confederation became evident, and the means were prepared for supplanting the various political differences in the organizations of the proprietary and southern colonies by constitutions which more nearly approximated the republican character of those in New England. This course of action, which supplemented the results of independence gained by the revolution, though more concealed in its workings, was quite as influential as was the war in producing a distinctive national feeling. With the result of the late war, the abolition of slavery, and the unification of the financial policy of the states, another great step has been taken towards the advancing organization of the social forces of the country. Labor has been made free from degradation, and the obstacle of slavery cleared away from the social and industrial advance of every one. With political equality, the means of education open freely to all, the guarantee of republican institutions in every state, with no legislative or other artificial impediments in the way of any one to improve his position, but with every avenue of industry open to all, and only individual fitness made the test of success, the United States now offers to the industry of the world, for the first time in the history of human progress, the opportunity for it to enjoy the most perfect freedom of development, and to take its proper place in the organization of liberty. With the use of the ballot, industry has secured the ability to peacefully obtain its rights, for which, in Europe, revolutions are still necessary. With the means of free education, the power to comprehend those rights is afforded to every one. With no restraint upon the freedom of every man to seek the spot where he can find the best opportunity for exercising his industry; with the wide expanse of the national domain open before him, and no custom-house or other governmental restriction to prevent his going wherever he may wish, industry, for the first time in its history, has the ability to control the selection of its own conditions, and organize them in accordance with the demands of its increasing knowledge. THE ACTIVITY OF NATIONAL LIFE. The political life and activity of a nation, like that of each individual, consist in the continuous adjustment of internal to external conditions, in this cycle of continuous motion and change which constitute the phenomena of the moral as of the physical world. Though it may not be at present possible to foresee with minuteness what is in store for us in the future, yet from a comparison of the immediate past, we can measurably prefigure the result. From the small beginnings which have here been rapidly sketched, with their simple uniformity of employments, we have seen produced, in less than three hundred years, the great diversity of our present occupations, and the differentiation of our industrial pursuits, of which this work will give an idea. With the increasing circle of employments for human energy, the forces brought to bear upon the question of social progress have increased in both number and intensity, and the solution of the problem, like that of the resolution of various forces in mechanics, has become more complex. Yet the result is in the line of progress, in the direction of securing to each individual the largest liberty for his personal endeavors, and for society at large the greatest amount of material for its collective comfort and wellbeing. Upon the next century of our national life, we start from a point which has been reached by the labors of two centuries, and with the collected experience of the generations which have preceded us, with the organized appliances which their labors have prepared for us, to carry forward still further the process of industrial development, and afford in our turn the evidence that the moral progress of mankind is best secured by liberty. AN AMERICAN INVENTION. AN EVIDENCE OF THE SPIRIT OF MODERN TIMES. - THE introduction of the sewing machine, by which the slow and tedious process of hand sewing is so largely done away with, is due entirely to American ingenuity and enterprise. Such an application of the modern spirit of industry, which seeks in every way to dignify labor by lifting it above the plane of drudgery, and by introducing the necessity for brains, as well as simple muscular force, into all the operations of industry, tends to make the operative more of a human being, exercising in his business of life more of the faculties which form the distinctive characteristic of man in the hierarchy of nature, and is analogous to the political equality which underlies the theory of our government, and which seeks to make of any individual of the body politic a citizen, conscious of the responsibilities of such a position, instead of a subject dependent upon others for a knowledge of his duties or his rights. The steps which, before the completion of a practically working. machine, were made in this general direction, will be seen to have been only such as in no way detract from the claim of America to have originated and perfected this industrial appliance. The ultimate effects of the sewing machine, though by no means yet fully attained, are still already sufficiently manifest to justify the assertion that this invention ranks among the foremost of this century. The earliest patent which appears to have been granted for a machine to improve or facilitate the process of sewing, was granted in England, on the 24th of July, 1755, to Charles F. Weisenthal, for an improved method of embroidering. Under this patent he claimed a needle, pointed at both ends, and having the eye in the middle, so that it could be passed both ways through the cloth without being turned round. The next patent was granted to Robert Alsop, in 1770, for the use of two or more shuttles in embroidery, their purpose being to secure the stitches. In 1804 John Duncan took out a patent for an improved process by the use of barbed or hooked needles, by which the loops were made and secured somewhat as the stitch is made in the single-thread sewing machine. In 1807 James Winter patented in England an appliance for sewing leather gloves, the importance of which here arises only from the fact that the material was held in position by metallic jaws, thus leaving the operator's hands free. On July 17, 1830, a French patent was granted to M. Thimonier for a machine to do crochet work, which could also be applied to sewing. In this machine a hooked needle was used.. In 1848 this machine was improved by M. Maguin, a partner of the inventor, and in 1851 was exhibited in the great London World's Fair of that date. None of these machines, however, were intended really for the purpose which the sewing machine performs, and are mentioned here simply because each of them in turn was a partial step in the use of some mechanical process, which was afterwards introduced in the sewing machine. In the Patent Office at Washington is the model of a "machine to sew a straight seam," which was patented February 21, 1842, by James Greenough, of Washington. This machine made what is known as the "shoemaker's stitch." The needle was made with the eye in the centre, and pointed at both ends, being pushed through and then drawn back by means of pinchers. In 1843 other patents were granted to G. R. Corliss and B. W. Bean. Bean's machine worked by crimping the material, by running it through corrugated rollers, and then sewed by thrusting a needle through the folds, thus, in fact, basting it. Another machine was patented in 1844, by Rogers. The next year, 1846, Elias Howe, Jr., patented his, on September 10. This was the first practicable machine for sewing. Though not patented until this year, Mr. Howe had invented the machine some years before, and working without the knowl |