Such,
under great natural disadvantages, is the grand result achieved in
Massachusetts, by education, science, industry, free schools, free soil,
free speech, _free labor_, free press, and free government. The facts
prove that freedom is progress, that 'knowledge is power,' and that the
best way to appreciate the value of property and augment wealth most
rapidly, is to invest a large portion of it in schools, high schools,
academies, colleges, universities, books, libraries, and the press, so
as to make labor more productive, because more skilled, educated, and
better directed. Massachusetts has achieved much in this respect; but
when she shall have made high schools as free and universal as common
schools, and the attendance on both compulsory, so as to qualify every
voter for governing a State or nation, she will have made a still
grander step in material and intellectual progress, and the results
would be still more astounding.
By Table 35 of the Census, p. 195, the whole value of all the property,
real and personal, of Massachusetts, in 1860, was $815,237,433, and that
of Maryland, $376,919,944. We have seen that the value of the products
that year in Massachusetts was $287,000,000 (exclusive of commerce), and
of Maryland, $66,000,000. As a question, then, of profit on capital,
that of Massachusetts was 35 per cent.
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