Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/136

Rh The other cause is the discovery of gold in California and then in Australia. This doubles or trebles the pecuniary momentum of America. Its stimulating influence on our covetousness, accumulation, and luxury, is obvious. What further and ultimate effects it will produce I shall not now pause to inquire. When a whirlwind rises, all men can see that dust is mounting to the sky.

Besides, the form of American industry is changed. Once New England and all the North were chiefly agricultural; manufactures and commerce were conducted on a small scale; and therein each man wrought on his own account. There was a great deal of individual activity, individuality of character. Few men worked for wages. Now New England is mainly manufacturing and commercial, Vermont is the only farming State. Mechanics, men and women, work for wages; many in the employment of a single man; thousands in the pay of one company, organized by superior ability. The workman loses his independence, and is not only paid but governed also by his employer's money. His opinions and character are formed after the prescribed pattern, by the mill he works in. The old military organizations for defence or aggression brought freedom of body distinctly in peril: the new industrial organizations jeopardize spiritual individuality, all freedom of mind and conscience. New England is a monumental proof thereof.

Another change also follows: the military habits of the North are all gone. Once New England had more fire-locks than householders; every man was a soldier and a marksman. Now the people have lost their taste for military discipline, and neither keep nor bear arms. Of course a few holiday soldiers, called out by a doctor, and commanded by an apothecary, can overawe the town.

The Northern, and especially the Eastern and Middle States, are the great centre of this industrial development. Here, and especially in New England, the desire for riches has become so powerful that a very large proportion of our men of the greatest practical intellect have almost exclusively turned their attention to purely productive business, to commerce and manufactures. They rarely engage in the work of politics—unprofitable and distasteful to the individual, and, at first sight, merely preservative and