Addresses Delivered at the Triennial Celebration (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1824. Excerpt: ... ADDRESS. Mr. President, Ladies And Gentlemen: --It is a great honor and pleasure to me to have been chosen to speak to you this evening. The rule of our Association is, I believe, that whoever gives the triennial address must be a member. Now membership in this Association implies that the person must be either a mechanic or an object of charity; I am not a mechanic according to the customary use" of that word, and I hope I am not yet an object of charity. How then shall I justify you in having admitted me? My life has been identified with the spinning and weaving of cotton cloth; that would constitute me in common speech a manufacturer, and would relegate me to the company at the other end of the avenue; but much as I honor the living and the dead to whom that great enterprise owes its existence I yet prefer your company. "The Lord do so to me, and more also, If aught but death part you and me." And by you will I be buried. But where, then, is your justification? If I am neither mechanic nor, as yet, an object of charity, what business have I to be a member of this Association? I will assert and prove my rights. / am the Association. Unless you can find another man in your number like myself--who never did anything with his own hands in his life, except to drive a pen--who can neither make a joint nor lay a brick, neither forge nor weld, neither stitch a seam nor set a type--then I only am the Association, and all the rest of you have no business here. Why? Because you are nothing but manufacturers, and I am the only mechanic in the hall. You can facture, or make something with the manus, or hand, I can only set mechanism in operation, and by means of machinery work out results in which I have no practical share myself. I can only work under the rule whic...