entable
condition of things. They had _not_ got a population of 211.78 to the
square mile, raked together from the four corners of creation, making
the State the sixth in density of all in the world, as she now boasts
she has, and thus she had totally failed to secure the higher and
better civilization.

They had not "developed their resources"; they had not built up
splendid great cities; they had little knowledge of the delights of
trade. Things could not get on so--that was not "progress." Here was
water power running to waste all over Massachusetts; there were keen
and able heads who believed they knew how to set these powers to work
to grind their grists; it was quite ridiculous that these tumbling
streams should not be turning millwheels and spinning cheap cotton. And
then too not a railroad ran through Massachusetts--no transportation
except in wagons. "Good God!" the pious people naturally exclaimed;
"what misery, what a slow set!" Money--money was then loaned at only
six per cent.! Things must be changed. They were changed. Mill after
mill was built, among them the "_Atlantic_." Railway after railway was
built, among them the "_Eastern_," and the stock was quickly paid up,
and all went merry as a marriage bell. But some people own those stocks
now, and do _not_ find themselves happy!

What is the cure for these shrivelled dividends? Clearly, is it not,
_to bring in cheap labor_? Let every man who has nothing and wants
much, take shares in

"THE CHEAP LABOR SOCIETY."

Seeing what has been done for Massachusetts, it is easy to see what can
be done. And what has been done? In fifty years she has built up
Lowell, and Lawrence, and Worcester, and Holyoke, and many more great
towns. She has increased Boston to a population of 341,919 souls--or
bodies--in the year of grace 1875. She has "improved" things so, has
made such progress, that Boston now spends yearly $15,114,389.73
(auditor's report 1875-6), which means that out of every man, woman,
and child of Boston was taken in 1875, for public expenses, the sum of
_forty-four dollars_! The happiness resulting from this may be partly
understood when I relate that this tax is some four hundred per cent.
greater than the "effete aristocracies" of Europe have ever got out of
their down-trodden serfs, or have even dared to try to get. One other
charming effect of this style of self-government (?), as we please to
call it, is, that it has driven out of Boston a set