Within the last fifty years this Commonwealth has almost entirely changed its industrial position. Half a century ago, agriculture, the fisheries, and commerce were the leading interests. Now, manufactures engross the attention of our people, and have made all other interests subordinate. They have not excluded other interests, but in a measure supplemented them. Our agriculture has changed and now finds its chief support in providing supplies for the manufacturing towns which have grown up in every part of the Commonwealth. Our commerce, both internal and external, is largely engaged in bringing to our doors the raw material for our laborers, and in spreading throughout the world the products of our manufacturing industry. We can raise but a small proportion of the food necessary to feed the people of the State; under such circumstances the transportation must weigh heavily upon our industry. We feel it in the increased cost of living, which increases the cost of every article we produce. We feel it in the increased cost of the raw materials of our manufactures, which makes us less able to compete successfully with more favored locations. We feel it finally in the increased cost of marketing our goods. This position has been so well stated by the Railroad Commissioners in their report of 1870, page 39, that I may repeat it here: "It may safely be asserted that there is no branch of Massachusetts industry which is not carried on against competition more advantageously located. The State has very few natural advantages; but everything with her depends on the intelligence of her people, and the cost of transportation. The West, in producing cereals, has at least a soil of unsurpassed fertility: Pennsylvania in manufacturing iron has the ore and the coal in close proximity to the furnace. The English mill-owner has his power and his labor in cheap profusion. Almost every article, however, which enters into the industries of Massachusetts has to be brought within her limits from a distance. Her very water powers are subject to inclement winters and dry summers, while she has to make her ingenuity supply a deficiency in labor. Her food is brought from the North-West: her wool and her leather from South America, Texas, California and the Central States: her cotton from the South: her ores from the Adirondacks: her coal from Pennsylvania; her copper from Superior,--and the list would admit of infinite extension. Massachusetts is thus merely an artificial point of meeting for all kinds and descriptions of raw material which is here worked up, and then sent abroad again to find a customer At every point, coming and going, and in process of manufacture, it has to be transported, and it has to bear all costs of transportation in competition with articles of the same description produced elsewhere and by others.