REPORT OF MR. HILL.
71
Again, there is in some quarters an idea that we are so superior to other nations that we have nothing to learn from them. It is perhaps true, in regard to certain industries, that we could teach more than we could learn; but in entertaining this opinion, there is great chance that others, who are taking every advantage for educating themselves, may be passing us in the contest. In other industries—pertaining to matters of art especially—our citizens, admitting our inferiority, have undervalued the artistic side of expositions, and the value of art generally. Leaving the moral and social considerations out of view, we believe there cannot be a greater mistake, in view of material prosperity. The State, like the individual, which can add to its practical skill good taste and artistic ornament, has added another element to its means of progress in wealth and influence.
So far, then, from joining in the general feeling in regard to foreign expositions, the writer believes that they can be made of very great value to us. Had our manufacturers more generally sent their productions to Vienna, it cannot be doubted that they would have been repaid, both pecuniarily and as a matter of education. While there is too much disposition with us to rest in the belief that we cannot reach foreign markets, the English, French, and above all, the Germans, are using every effort to learn the tastes and wants of other nations, and to adapt themselves to them, and are seeking every means to show what they can furnish.
We, in Massachusetts, cannot now afford to let pass any opportunity for educating our producers, nor for opening new markets.
The last census reports show that we are hardly holding our own with the rest of the United States in the increase of our manufacturing interests, and that some of them are in fact advancing much more rapidly than we.
In former times, the rocky nature of our soil and our climatic conditions forced us into manufacturing industries, m which we acquired a skill and reputation which made it difficult for other parts of the country to % compete with us; but with the increase of wealth in other sections, the requisite * skill is there being gained for competition with us, and we