Part 25

The first railway engine in the United States was built in 1830. Such engines had been in use in England for some time. The earliest railroads were very short. Seven companies owned the parts of the first line from Albany, New York to Buffalo. Now in the same number of great systems is included two-thirds of the mileage of the United States.

[Sidenote: =Rapid growth of railroads=]

On March 10, 1869, the Union Pacific Railway, the first link between the Atlantic and the Pacific, was finally completed. There were then only a few short lines besides, west of the Mississippi. It was hard to find the large amounts of capital needed for railway building. Congress and the states helped the railroads by granting them many square miles of land along their rights of way. After 1869 the miles of railroad in the United States increased over seven times in twenty years. To-day (1920) seven great railways cross the mountains to the Pacific coast.

[Sidenote: =Farming develops=]

=195. The Growth of Farming.= The railroads brought thousands of settlers into the new regions. But it was no longer to hunt for gold. It was to build homes on the rich farm lands of the West.

Miners, cattlemen, farmers, and permanent settlers crowded on the lands of the Indians. The regions occupied by the red men now became smaller and smaller. Nearly all the Indians were placed on reservations on land which the national government does not allow to pass out of their hands.

[Sidenote: =Irrigation projects aided by the government=]

The need of more and still more land brought the farmers to the dry slopes and plateaus of both sides of the Rockies. Here were vast regions which water would make productive. The government gave its support to great irrigation projects. Water was brought to the barren deserts and they became vast expanses of waving grain.

[Sidenote: =Gold becomes more difficult to get=]

In California the rich gold deposits which lay comparatively free were growing smaller. The gold seekers were no longer able to wash gold from the sands and gravel of the river beds, or to find nuggets in rocky hollows of the hillsides. They had to make a living in some other way. Vast mineral resources were still there, but they could only be reached by mining. Expensive machinery was necessary, and companies were formed to work the deposits.

[Sidenote: =California a great agricultural state=]

Then began the real development of California and the great Pacific Northwest. Up to 1875 California had been peopled with prospectors for gold. Now the output of minerals kept increasing, but the farm crops grew still faster in value until in 1920 they were worth many times the mineral output, because of the wonderful climate and the richness of the land.

[Sidenote: =The leading fruit-growing state=]

The first product to which the settler turned was wheat. California became one of the leading wheat states of the Union. Then the state discovered its great fruit-growing possibilities, and to-day it raises the largest fruit crop in the nation. People at first became almost as excited about their golden orange crops as they had been over yellow metal.

[Sidenote: =Great cities develop=]

Meanwhile great cities were springing up rapidly, and the riches of forest, mine, and stream brought unlimited prosperity and growth. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland have taken their places among the great cities of the Union.

[Sidenote: =Agriculture on the great plains=]

From the Mississippi valley to the mountains agriculture and commerce developed with great strides. Enormous elevators were built to handle the vast quantities of grain. Great packing plants were established, where immense numbers of cattle and sheep could be slaughtered and the meat shipped to all parts of the world.

GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS, CHIEF ENGINEER OF THE PANAMA CANAL

=196. The Panama Canal.= In the great rush of gold seekers to the Pacific coast, many of the thousands who started out never reached California, for the crossing of the Panama isthmus and the long journey around Cape Horn were both full of danger.

It was this which first made Americans realize the value to their country of a canal across the Isthmus. As time passed, the great development of the Pacific coast region brought demands for fast and easy communication with the East. Railroads were built across the mountains, but transportation was still very expensive. The remedy lay in a short route by water between the east and the west coasts. Then came the Spanish-American War and the wonderful trip of the _Oregon_. People now saw that a canal across the Isthmus of Panama must be built at whatever cost.

[Sidenote: =The French attempt to build a canal=]

[Sidenote: =Work begun by the United States=]

In 1869 a French company had begun building a canal at Panama. They met great difficulties. The expense was so heavy and the waste of money so great that little progress was made before the company failed. In 1903 the United States bought the rights of the French company and obtained a strip of land ten miles wide from the new Republic of Panama. Work was then begun by our government where the French had left off.

[Sidenote: =George Washington Goethals, 1858=]

[Sidenote: =Studies engineering at West Point=]

[Sidenote: =Serves in the Spanish-American War=]

=197. George Washington Goethals.= During the progress of the work there were several changes in the position of chief engineer in charge of building the canal. In 1907 this work was given to George Washington Goethals, of the corps of army engineers. Colonel Goethals was born in Brooklyn, June 29, 1858. He was clearly a boy of unusual ability. At the age of fifteen he entered the College of the City of New York. At graduation he stood at the head of his class. He then took up the study of engineering at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He advanced rapidly, and when twenty-four years of age was appointed first lieutenant of army engineers. After teaching at West Point for several years he was appointed captain of engineers. His ability caused him to be given charge of the Mussel Shoals Canal Construction on the Tennessee River. During the Spanish-American War he served with the volunteers as lieutenant-colonel and chief of engineers.

[Sidenote: =Goethals put in charge=]

In 1907 came the great opportunity of his life. He was given charge of building the Panama Canal. He faced a gigantic task. But the government of his country had entrusted it to him, and he determined to do it without losing more lives by fever than necessary.

[Sidenote: =Canal completed, 1914=]

The great work was finished at a comparatively low cost. Meanwhile Colonel Goethals had cleaned up the Canal Zone and made it a healthful place to live in.

The building of the Canal took about eight years' time, required the services of forty thousand men, and cost the United States four hundred million dollars.

[Sidenote: =Goethals governor of the Canal Zone=]

When the Canal was nearly finished, in 1914, a civil government was established in the Canal Zone. President Wilson appointed Colonel Goethals the first governor. The enormous task which he had done so well showed that he was a great manager as well as a great engineer.

[Sidenote: =Benefit of Canal to the Pacific States=]

=198. Value of the Canal to the Pacific Coast.= The Pacific Coast States now more than ever ranked high among the leading states of the country. They could now send the valuable products of their forests, streams, fields, and mines to the Atlantic coast by water. The water route to New York has been shortened by 7,800 miles, and to Europe by more than 5,600 miles. The canal supplies a cheaper means of carrying freight than the overland route, and there is no limit to its usefulness for this purpose.

[Sidenote: =The San Francisco Exposition=]

In 1915 the Panama-Pacific International Exposition was held at San Francisco and the Panama-California Exposition at San Diego to celebrate the opening of the Canal.

SUGGESTIONS INTENDED TO HELP THE PUPIL

=The Leading Facts.= _1._ Gold seekers reached the Pacific coast by three routes: by ship around Cape Horn; across the Isthmus at Panama; and over trails across the mountains. _2._ With new discoveries of gold and the increasing population on the Pacific coast, means of rapid communication were urgently needed. _3._ In 1869 the Union Pacific Railway was completed. _4._ Settlers in large numbers entered the new West; agriculture on the great plains developed rapidly. _5._ Farmers crowded on the dry slopes and plateaus and irrigation projects were aided by the government. _6._ In California, when free deposits of gold became hard to find, the gold seekers became farmers. _7._ First a leading wheat state, California then became the leading fruit-growing state. _8._ Great cities grew up along the coast.

_9._ The Spanish-American War brought home to Americans the urgent necessity for a short route by water between the east and the west coasts. _10._ The United States took up the work of building a canal at Panama, buying the rights of a French company which had started the work and had failed. _11._ George Washington Goethals given position of chief engineer. _12._ Educated at West Point, Goethals served as chief of engineers in the Spanish-American War. _13._ The Canal was completed in 1914 and Goethals was appointed first governor of the Canal Zone, a strip of land ten miles wide along the course of the Canal. _14._ The Panama-Pacific International Exposition was held at San Francisco in 1915 to celebrate the opening of the Canal.

=Study Questions.= _1._ How did the gold seekers reach the Pacific Coast? _2._ What demand did the increasing population in the West bring? _3._ What was the name of the first railway across the mountains to the Pacific coast? _4._ How many railways cross the mountains to-day? _5._ What did the railways bring about? _6._ How did this affect the Indians? _7._ How did the government aid the farmers in the dry areas? _8._ What happened in California when the free gold deposits gave out? _9._ What great cities grew up along the Pacific coast? _10._ What was happening in the plains east of the Rockies? _11._ What first brought home to Americans the urgent need of a canal across the Isthmus? _12._ Who began a canal at Panama? _13._ Why did the French not succeed? _14._ Who was put in charge of the work of the Americans? _15._ Where did Goethals study engineering? _16._ In what war did he serve? _17._ When was the Canal completed? _18._ How was the event celebrated?

=Suggested Readings.= Wright, _Children's Stories of American Progress_, 268-298; Brooks, _The Story of Cotton_ and _The Story of Corn_; Nida, _Panama and Its "Bridge of Water,"_ 63-187.

MEN OF RECENT TIMES WHO MADE GREAT INVENTIONS

THOMAS A. EDISON, THE GREATEST INVENTOR OF ELECTRICAL MACHINERY IN THE WORLD

[Sidenote: =His parentage=]

=199. The Wizard of the Electrical World.= Thomas A. Edison was born in 1847 at Milan, Ohio. His father's people were Dutch and his mother's were Scotch. When he was seven years of age his parents removed to Port Huron, Michigan.

Edison owed his early training to his mother's care. At the age of twelve he was reading such books as Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, Hume's _History of England_, Newton's _Principia_, and Ure's _Dictionary of Science_. The last-named book was too full of mathematics for him.

[Sidenote: =A tireless reader=]

That Edison was a great reader is proved by his resolution to read all the books in the Detroit Free Library! He did finish "fifteen feet of volumes" before any one knew what he was doing.

In 1862 General Grant fought the terrible battle of Pittsburg Landing. Everybody wanted to hear the news. Edison bought a thousand newspapers, boarded a train, and the engineer allowed him a few minutes at each station to sell papers.

[Sidenote: =His experience as a newsboy=]

As the first station came in sight, Edison looked ahead and saw a wild crowd of men. He grabbed an armful of papers, rushed out, and sold forty before the train left. At the next station the platform was crowded with a yelling mob. He raised the price to ten cents, but sold one hundred fifty.

Finally he reached Port Huron. The station was a mile from town. Edison seized his papers. He met the crowd coming just as he reached a church where a prayer meeting was being held. The prayer meeting broke up, and though he raised his price to twenty-five cents he "took in a young fortune."

[Sidenote: =Experimenting in electricity=]

Edison began very early to make experiments in electricity. After rigging up a line at home, hitching the wire to the legs of a cat, and rubbing the cat's back vigorously, he saw the failure of his first experiment--the cat would not stand!

[Sidenote: =Saves a life and receives lessons in telegraphy=]

At Mt. Clemens, one day, young Edison saw a child playing on the railroad with its back to an on-coming freight train. He dashed at the child, and both tumbled to the ground at the roadside. For this act of bravery the telegraph operator gave him lessons in telegraphy.

[Sidenote: =Makes a set of telegraphic instruments=]

[Sidenote: =Becomes a tramp telegrapher=]

=200. Begins to Study Electricity.= He studied ten days, then disappeared. He returned with a complete set of telegraphic instruments made by his own hand! After his trade was learned he began a period of wandering as a telegraph operator. For many boys still in their teens this would have been a time of destruction, but Edison neither drank nor smoked. He wandered from Adrian to Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Memphis, and Boston, stopping for shorter or longer periods at each place.

By the time he was twenty-two he had invented and partly finished his plan of sending two dispatches along the same wire at the same time. This was equal to doubling the number of wires in use.

[Sidenote: =Repairs electric machinery and gains a situation=]

Edison was a poor boy and was two or three hundred dollars in debt. He went from Boston to New York. The speculators in Wall Street were wild with excitement, for the electric machinery had broken down. Nobody could make it work. Edison pushed his way to the front, saw the difficulty, and at once removed it.

All were loud in their praise of Edison. On the next day he was engaged to take charge of all the electric machinery at three hundred dollars per month.

[Sidenote: =Receives forty thousand dollars for his inventions=]

After a time he joined a company and gave his time to working out inventions. The company finally sent a number of men to ask Edison how much he would take for his inventions. He had already decided to say five thousand dollars. But when the men came he said that he did not know. He was dumfounded when they offered him forty thousand dollars!

[Sidenote: =Establishes his first workshop=]

=201. Edison's Inventions.= In 1873 Edison established his first laboratory or workshop in Newark, New Jersey. Here he gathered more than three hundred men to turn out the inventions pertaining to electricity which his busy brain suggested. They were all as enthusiastic over the inventions as Edison himself. No fixed hours of labor in this shop! When the day's work was done the men often begged to be allowed to return to the shop to complete their work.

[Sidenote: =More inventions=]

[Sidenote: =Builds a new laboratory and gathers a fine library=]

Many telegraph and telephone inventions were made in this laboratory. There were forty-five inventions all told. They brought in so much money that Edison decided they must have a better place to work. He built at Menlo Park, New Jersey, twenty-four miles from New York City, the finest laboratory then in the world. On instruments alone he spent $100,000. In the great laboratory at Menlo Park Edison gathered one of the finest scientific libraries that money could buy. This library was for the men in the factory--to help them in their inventions and to give them pleasure.

[Sidenote: =Invents the microphone=]

The microphone is one of Edison's inventions. Its purpose is to increase sound while sending it over the wire. The passing of a delicate camel's-hair brush is magnified so as to seem like the roar of a mighty wind in a forest of giant pines.

[Sidenote: =The megaphone=]

Next came the megaphone, an instrument to bring far-away sounds to one's hearing. By means of this instrument, persons talking a long distance apart are able to hear each other with ease.

The phonograph, which can reproduce the human voice and other sounds almost perfectly, was invented by Edison in 1876.

[Sidenote: =Edison's first phonograph=]

Sounds reach the ear by means of air waves which the sounding body sets in motion. In Edison's first phonograph these waves struck a bit of taut parchment, and were marked by a needle on a tinfoil disc. But tinfoil does not hold its shape well. In 1888 Edison patented a better phonograph in which the record was made on a wax disc.

Phonograph records are now made with one hundred grooves to an inch. Each groove is not more than four one-thousandths of an inch deep. A lever tipped with sapphire cuts the grooves. Its tiny marks have been photographed--one way of seeing a sound!

[Sidenote: =What the phonograph does=]

The phonograph is used everywhere for amusement. It preserves the voices of great singers for the future. With it songs and bits of folklore can be collected in languages that are now dying out.

[Sidenote: =The electric light=]

Edison has put into practical use many principles discovered by other men. He does not claim to be the discoverer of the electric light. He did much, however, to make it useful to people in lighting their houses, and also in lighting great cities.

[Sidenote: =The first great electrical exhibition=]

In the winter of 1880, in Menlo Park, Edison gave to the public an exhibition of his electric light. Visitors came from all parts of the country to see this wonderful show. Seven hundred lights were put up in the streets, and inside the buildings. Edison had produced a much better light than any that had been used before.

=202. A Great New Industry.= Edison also had a part in another invention for which Americans can claim most of the credit--moving pictures.

[Sidenote: =Settling a racetrack dispute=]

A dispute about horseracing did most for the discovery of moving pictures. The question was whether a horse ever had all four feet off the ground at once. To settle it, Edward Muybridge, an employee of the government, was called in. He stretched cords, fastened to the shutters of a row of cameras, across a racetrack. As the horse ran past, it took its own pictures. Later Muybridge made a camera which would take pictures very quickly, but he could not show his pictures well.

[Sidenote: =Edison's camera=]

Edison in 1892 invented a camera which used long strips of celluloid film. These pictures were looked at through a slot by one person at a time.

Another government worker, C. Francis Jenkins, invented the first complete moving picture machine in 1894.

[Sidenote: =The moving picture business=]

At first people were slow to welcome the new kind of play. Now it is claimed that our fifth largest industry is moving pictures. Probably as many tickets are sold here each year as there are people in the world.

[Sidenote: =Moving pictures of the war=]

In the war each army had its own moving picture camera men. They took pictures of ships torpedoed, of airplane battles, and of the fighting among the icy peaks of the Alps, often at great danger to their own lives. Great events of world history like the signing of the armistice can now be recorded for future times. Such pictures teach us things that cannot easily be learned from books.

Many schools have a machine of their own, and use moving pictures as a part of their regular class work. The subject is first outlined, then the pictures are shown, and afterwards the pupils write about what they have learned.

[Sidenote: =Moving pictures in schools=]

Some schools have films of their own. Others find it easy to get them. Our government sends out educational films on silo building, dairying, airplane manufacture, and many government activities. Business firms have films to loan on shoes, soap, automobiles, and other things they make. Regular film companies have pictures of animal life, the natural wonders of our country, current events, foreign countries, and other subjects suitable for school use, such as the teaching of cube root by moving picture cartoons.

Outside of schools moving pictures can be used for educational purposes in social service and Americanization work. One state, North Carolina, has trucks carrying moving picture machines for many of its counties. Programs of educational and amusing pictures can be given regularly in small towns with these machines.

TWO INVENTIONS WIDELY USED IN BUSINESS

[Sidenote: =The work of many inventors=]

=203. Christopher L. Sholes and the Typewriter.= The typewriter cannot be called the invention of any one man. Many inventors, half of them Americans, worked on the problem, for even a simple machine has many parts.

Machines by which the blind could print or type raised letters were first made. A little difficulty may hold back a great invention. A typewriter was not built until long afterward because inventors did not know how to ink type.

In the Scientific American more than fifty years ago was printed an article on a new invention which was rather grandly called the "literary piano." Christopher Latham Sholes, a Wisconsin editor read the article. He was convinced that he could make a better typewriter than this himself.

[Sidenote: =The earliest typewriter=]

He set to work, and his first typewriter was patented in 1868. It was indeed something like a piano. It had long ivory and ebony keys, but it also had a third set of peg-shaped keys like those we now use. It carried its type on levers arranged in a circle. It had a spacer, and a way to move the paper along as it was typed, as well as inked ribbon, which he borrowed from an earlier inventor.

Sholes' was the first successful practical typewriter made. Now nearly twenty million dollars' worth are produced in this country each year.

=204. The Dictaphone in Business Offices.= An interesting outgrowth of Edison's phonograph is the dictaphone, used in dictating business letters. It consists of two machines much alike. On the first are put smooth cylinders of wax. The person dictating speaks through a tube. Then the dictaphone operator puts the cylinders on her machine, places light tubes in her ears, and takes down the dictation on her typewriter as she hears it.

Both machines are run by electric motors, and that of the operator can be stopped with the foot. The wax cylinders may be pared and used again and again.

The dictaphone means a great saving of time and labor, for dictating can be done anywhere at any moment.

AUTOMOBILE MAKING IN THE UNITED STATES

=205. The Earliest Automobiles.= The first kind of automobile men tried to build was a "steam carriage." A Frenchman in 1755 invented a steam road wagon meant to draw a field gun. But his invention could not be steered, and was soon wrecked by running into a wall.

[Sidenote: ="Steamers"=]