CHAPTER XXXVII.

Robert Fulton, George Stephenson, and the Triumphs of Invention.

[=Anglo-Saxon Activity in Invention=]

In no direction has the nineteenth century been more prolific than in that of invention, and its fame in the future is likely to be largely based on its immense achievements in this field of human activity. It has been great in other directions,--in science, in exploration, in political and moral development, but it is perhaps in invention and the industrial adaptation of scientific discovery that it stands highest and has done most for the advancement of mankind. And it is a fact of great interest that much the most striking and important work in this direction has been done by the Anglo-Saxon race, in many respects the most enterprising and progressive race upon the face of the earth. For the beginning of this work, during the eighteenth century, credit must be given to Great Britain, and especially for the notable invention of the steam engine, which forms the foundation stone of the whole immense edifice. But to the development of the work, during the nineteenth century, we must seek the United States, whose inventive activity and the value of its results have surpassed those of any other region of the earth.

[=James Watt and the Steam Engine=]

We cannot confine ourselves to the nineteenth century in considering this subject, but must go back to the eighteenth, and glance at the epoch-making discovery of James Watt, the famous Scottish engineer, to whom we owe the great moving force of nineteenth century industry and progress, and whose life extended until 1819, well within the century. There exists an interesting legend that his attention was first attracted to the power of steam when a boy, when sitting by the fireside and observing the lid of his mother's tea-kettle lifted by the escaping steam. It is not, however, to the discovery, but to the useful application of steam power that his fame is due. The use of steam as a motive power had been attempted long before, and steam pumps used almost a century before Watt's great invention. What he did was to produce the first effective steam engine, the parent machine upon which the multitudinous improvements during the succeeding century were based.

[=Nineteenth Century Invention=]

While the eighteenth century is notable for the discovery of the steam engine and for the first stages in the production of labor-saving machinery, the great triumphs in the latter field of invention were made in the succeeding century, during which era the powers of human production were developed to an extent not only unprecedented, but almost incredible, the powers of man, aided by steam and electricity, being increased a hundred-fold during a century of time. It would need a volume devoted to this subject alone to tell, even in epitome, all that has been done in this direction, and here we must confine ourselves to a rapid review of the leading results of inventive genius.

[=Labor-saving Machinery of the Eighteenth Century=]

Both in Great Britain and in America notable triumphs in the invention of labor-saving machines were accomplished in the closing period of the eighteenth century. These include the famous British inventions of the spinning jenny of James Hargreaves, the spinning frame of Sir Richard Arkwright, and the power loom of Dr. Cartwright, the first notable aids in cotton manufacture. These were rendered available by the cotton-gin of Eli Whitney, the American inventor, by whose genius the production of cotton fibre was enormously cheapened. Other celebrated American inventors of this period were John Fitch, to whose efforts the first practical steamboat was due, and Oliver Evans, who revolutionized milling machinery, his devices in flour and grist mills being in use for half a century after his death. He was also the first to devise a steam carriage, and in 1804 built a steam dredger, which propelled itself through the streets of Philadelphia and afterwards was moved as a stern-wheel steamboat on the Schuylkill River. Another famous invention of this period was the nail machine of Jacob Perkins, patented in 1795, though not fully developed until 1810. At that time nails were all hand-wrought, and cost twenty-five cents a pound. By this machine the ancient hand process was speedily brought to an end and the price of nails has since been reduced to little more than that of the iron of which they are made. Another famous American inventor of early date was Thomas Blanchard, the most notable of whose many inventions was the Blanchard lathe, developed in 1819, for the turning of irregular forms, a contrivance of the utmost value in doing away with slow and costly methods of labor.

[=The Steamboat and Locomotive=]

Of early inventions of the nineteenth century, however, the most notable were the steamboat and the locomotive, the later development of which has been of extraordinary value to mankind. Previous to the century under review, for a period of several thousand years, the horse had been depended on for rapid land travel, the sail for rapid motion on the water. The inventions of Fulton and Stephenson brought these ancient systems to an end, and within a single century produced a magical change in the ability of man to make his way over the surface of land and sea.

The application of steam to the movement of boats had been tried by several inventors in Great Britain and America in the eighteenth century, the most successful being John Fitch, whose steamboat was used for months on the Delaware about 1790. But the earliest inventor to produce a commercially successful steamboat was Robert Fulton, another American, whose boat, the _Clermont_, was given its trial trip on the Hudson in 1807.

[=Fulton's Boat the "Clermont"=]

[=The First Steamboat Trip Up the Hudson=]

This boat, in which was employed the principle of the side paddle-wheel, and which used a more powerful engine than John Fitch could command, was completed in August, 1807, and excited a great degree of public interest, far more than had been given to the pioneer steamboat. Monday, September 11, 1807, the time set for sailing, came, and expectation was at its highest pitch. The friends of the inventor were in a state of feverish anxiety lest the enterprise should come to grief, and the scoffers on the wharf were ready to give vent to shouts of derision. Precisely at the hour of one the moorings were thrown off, and the _Clermont_ moved slowly out into the stream. Volumes of smoke rushed forth from her chimney, and her wheels, which were uncovered, scattered the spray far behind her. The spectacle was certainly novel to the people of those days, and some of the crowd on the wharf broke into shouts of ridicule. Soon, however, the jeers grew silent, for it was seen that the steamer was increasing her speed. Soon she was fairly under way, and making a steady progress up the stream at the rate of five miles per hour. The incredulity of the spectators had been succeeded by astonishment, and now this feeling gave way to undisguised delight, and cheer after cheer went up from the vast throng. In a little while, however, the boat was observed to stop, and the enthusiasm at once subsided. The scoffers were again in their glory, and unhesitatingly pronounced the enterprise a failure. But to their chagrin, the steamer, after a short delay, once more proceeded on her way, and this time even more rapidly than before. Fulton had discovered that the paddles were too long, and took too deep a hold on the water, and had stopped the boat for the purpose of shortening them.

This defect remedied, the _Clermont_ continued her voyage during the rest of the day and all night, without stopping, and at one o'clock the next day ran alongside the landing at Clermont, the seat of Chancellor Livingston. She lay there until nine the next morning, when she continued her voyage toward Albany, reaching that city at five in the afternoon. On her return trip, she reached New York in thirty hours running time--exactly five miles per hour.

[=The Effect of the Steamboat on River Men=]

The river was at this time navigated entirely with sailing vessels. The surprise and dismay excited among the crews of these vessels by the appearance of the steamer was extreme. These simple people beheld what they supposed to be a huge monster, vomiting fire and smoke from its throat, lashing the water with its fins, and shaking the river with its roar, approaching rapidly in the face of both wind and tide. Some threw themselves flat on the decks of their vessels, where they remained in an agony of terror until the monster had passed, while others took to their boats and made for the shore in dismay, leaving their vessels to drift helplessly down the stream.

The introduction of the steamboat gave a powerful impetus to the internal commerce of the Union. It opened to navigation many important rivers whose swift currents had closed them to sailing craft, and made rapid and easy communication between the most distant parts of the country practicable. The public soon began to appreciate this, and orders came in rapidly for steamboats for various parts of the country. Fulton executed these as fast as possible, several among the number being for boats on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

[=Development of Ocean Steamers=]

The subsequent history of this important invention need but be glanced at here. The first steamship to cross the ocean was the _Savannah_, which set out from the city of that name in 1819, and reached Liverpool by the combined aid of wind and steam in twenty-eight days. The first to cross entirely by steam power was the _Royal William_, a Canadian-built vessel, in 1833. A year or two later the _Great Britain_, the first iron ocean steamer--322 feet long by 31 feet beam--crossed the ocean in fifteen days. Since then the development of steam navigation, alike on inland and ocean waters, has been enormous, and an extraordinary increase has been made in the size and speed of steam vessels. Forty years ago the fastest ocean steamer took more than nine days to cross from New York to Queenstown. This journey can be made now in a little over five days. As regards size, the great _Oceanic_, whose first voyage was made in 1899, surpasses any other boat ever built. This sea-monster is 704 feet long, and has a displacement of 28,000 tons, while it is capable of steaming around the earth at twelve knots an hour without recoaling. Its engine power is enormous, and its carrying capacity unprecedented. This leviathan considerably outranks in dimensions the _Great Eastern_, the former ocean marvel, and fitly typifies the progress of the century. As will be remembered the _Great Eastern_ proved a failure, while the _Oceanic_ is a pronounced success.

Important as has been the invention of the steamboat, it is much surpassed by that of the locomotive and the railroad, which have increased the ease, cheapness, and rapidity of land travel and freight transportation far more than steam navigation has increased traffic by water. While the sailing vessel falls short of the steamship as an aid to commerce, the difference between the two is very much less than that between the horse and the locomotive, the iron rail and the ordinary road, and the railroad has achieved a revolution in transportation equal to that made by the steam engine in manufacture.

[=George Stephenson and the Locomotive=]

[=The Performance of the "Rocket"=]

The motor engine is, aside from the work of Oliver Evans, already mentioned, solely a result of nineteenth century enterprise. The railroad came earlier, first in the form of tramways of wood; the earliest iron rails being laid in England about 1767. But it was not until after 1800 that an attempt was made to replace the horse by the steam carriage on these roads. Of those who sought to solve this problem, George Stephenson, a poor English workingman, stands decidedly first. While serving as fireman in a colliery, and later as engineer, he occupied himself earnestly in the study of machinery, and as early as 1814 constructed for the colliery a traction engine with two cylinders. This was seated on a boiler mounted on wheels, which were turned by means of chains connected with their axles. It drew eight loaded cars at a speed of four miles an hour. This was a clumsy affair, weak in power, and inefficient in service, but it was much superior to any other engine then in use, and was improved on greatly by his second engine, built the following year, and in which he used the steam blast-pipe. These early engines were not much esteemed, and the horse continued to be employed in preference, the first passenger railroad, the Stockton and Darlington, opened in 1825, being run by horse-power. Meanwhile Stephenson continued to work on the locomotive, improving it year after year, until his early ventures were far surpassed in efficiency by his later. A French engineer, M. Seguin, in 1826, successfully introduced locomotives in which improved appliances for increasing the draught were employed. At that time, indeed, inventors seem to have been actively engaged on this problem, and when the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, begun in 1825, offered premiums for the best engines to be run at high speed, a number of applicants appeared. The premium was easily won, in 1830, by Stephenson's "Rocket," the most effective locomotive yet produced. This antediluvian affair, as it would appear to-day, weighed only 4¼ tons, but was able to draw a load of 17 tons at an average speed of fourteen miles an hour, sometimes reaching seventeen miles. When run alone it attained thirty miles an hour, to the amazement and admiration of the public. It is to George Stephenson we owe the locomotive as an effective piece of mechanism. "He found it inefficient," says Smiles, "and he made it powerful, efficient and useful."

[=First American Railroads and Locomotives=]

While these events were taking place in England and France, the new idea had taken root in America, and the inventors and engineers of the United States set themselves to the development of the problem. Short lines of railway, for horse traction, were laid at early dates, the first locomotive, the "Stourbridge Lion," being imported from England and placed on a short line at Honesdale, Pa., in 1829. The Baltimore and Ohio, the first passenger railroad in the United States, was begun in 1830, and on it was tried the earliest American-built locomotive, the production of Peter Cooper, the celebrated philanthropist of later years. This was a toy affair, with a three and a half inch cylinder, an upright tubular boiler made of old gun barrels, and a fan blower to increase the draught. Its weight was two and a half tons. Yet it did not lack speed, making the run from Baltimore to Ellicott's Mills, twenty-seven miles, in an hour. But the first serviceable American locomotive was the "Best Friend," built at West Point, N. Y., and run on the Charleston and Hamburg Road, in South Carolina, in 1830, shortly after Stephenson's "Rocket" had been tried. The "Best Friend" could make more than thirty miles an hour, and could draw a train of four or five coaches, with forty to fifty passengers, at twenty miles an hour. It was inferior to the "Rocket," however, in design, and its career came to a sudden end through the zeal of a negro fireman, who sat on the safety valve to stop the escape of steam. The fireman shared the fate of the locomotive.

[=Development of The Railroad=]

Such was the railroad as it began,--a microscopic event. To-day it is of telescopic magnitude. At the end of 1831 there were less than a hundred miles of railroad in the United States, and probably still fewer elsewhere. At the end of the century this country alone had over 180,000 miles of railroad, while there were single railroad systems with more than 8000 miles of track. In the whole world there were about 450,000 miles of road,--only two and a half times the mileage of the United States.

[=Great Railroad Bridges=]

As for the development of the locomotive, the railroad carriage, the track, etc., it has been enormous, and sixty miles an hour for passenger trains is now a common speed, while the numbers of people and tons of freight transported annually by the railroads of the world are incredibly great. We cannot here undertake to describe the notable feats of engineering which have carried railroads over rivers and chasms, over mountains impassable otherwise except by sure-footed mules, across deserts too hot and dry even for mule trains. "No heights seem too great to-day, no valleys too deep, no cañons too forbidding, no streams too wide; if commerce demands it the engineer will respond and the railways will be built." The railroad bridges of the country would make a continuous structure from New York to San Francisco, and include many of the boldest and most original, as well as the longest and highest, bridges in the world. The pioneer railroad suspension bridge at Niagara Falls was as remarkable in its day for boldness and originality as for dimensions and success. A single span of 821 feet, supported by four cables, carried the track 245 feet above the river that rushed beneath. The cables were supported by masonry towers, whose slow disintegration gave occasion for an engineering feat even more notable than the original construction of the bridge. The first railroad bridge across the Ohio was at Steubenville, completed in 1866; the first iron bridge over the Upper Mississippi was the Burlington bridge of 1869. The first great bridge across the Mississippi was Eads' magnificent structure at St. Louis, whose beautiful steel arches of over 500 feet span each give no hint of the difficult problems that had to be solved before a permanent bridge was possible at that point. It was completed in 1874. Since then the great river has been frequently bridged for railroads, while its great branch, the Missouri, has been crossed by bridges in a dozen places.

[=The Electric Steel Railway=]

The steam railroad has been supplemented by the electric street railway, which at the close of the century was being extended at a highly promising rate. Passenger travel in cities by aid of the horse railway was inaugurated about the middle of the century, the horse beginning to be replaced by the electric motor in 1881, when the first railway of this character was laid in Berlin. A second was laid in Ireland in 1883. But the electric steel railway has made its greatest progress in the United States, where the first line went into operation at Richmond, Va., in 1888. This adopted the overhead trolly system, since so widely employed, and the length of line had increased to over 3,000 miles in 1892 and 15,000 miles in 1897. Since that date the progress of electric railways has been enormous, they being extended from the cities far into the country, where they come into active competition with the steam roads. Electric locomotives are also in use, and the twentieth century is likely to see a development of electric traction which will have the whole earth for its field, and may perhaps displace the steam road, the great triumph in transportation of the nineteenth century.

[=The Bicycle and the Automobile=]

Other recent devices for swift travel are the bicycle, which came extraordinarily into use during the last quarter of the century, and the automobile carriage, whose era only fairly began as the century reached its end. It is in the direction of the latter and of aërial travel that the twentieth century will perhaps achieve its most notable triumphs in this field. As for the horse, man's most useful servant at the beginning of the century, it was rapidly being displaced at the end, and may during the century to come cease to be employed in the service of man.

[=Marvels in Iron and Wood-working=]

The story of railroading leads naturally to that of progress in iron and steel work generally, which has been extraordinary during the century. Of inventions in this direction perhaps the most notable is the Bessemer steel-making process, which converts iron into steel by the direct addition of the necessary quantity of carbon, and has had the important result of making steel cheaper to-day than iron was not very many years ago. In iron-working machinery the progress has been very great, and in no other field has the genius of the American inventor been more conspicuously displayed. The same may be said of wood-working machinery, in which the most clever mechanism is employed. The result is that many articles in metal and wood, of the most varied and useful kinds, formerly almost unattainable by the rich, are now within the easy reach of the poor, and the comfort and convenience of common life to-day are enormously in advance of those enjoyed by our ancestors of a century ago.

As it is impossible to name all the inventions which conduce to this increase in convenience, it will perhaps suffice to name one alone, the friction match, that most useful of small contrivances, which has relegated into the museum of antiquities the slow and clumsy flint and steel to which the world was for centuries confined. This invention, gradually developed in various countries, owes its cheapness largely to the invention of an American, whose patent, taken out in 1836, first made possible the production of phosphorus matches on a large scale.

[=Progress in Illumination and Heating=]

Mention of the friction match opens to us one broad vista of nineteenth century progress, too great to be more than glanced at. This embraces the replacement of wood by coal for heating purposes, the development of the stove, the furnace, the coal-burning grate, and various conveniences of like character. As regards the tallow candle, which was in common use during the first third of the century, it seems as antiquated now as the pyramids. Various kinds of oil succeeded it as illuminants, until the discovery of petroleum set them all aside, and gave the world one of its most useful natural products. Then came the illuminating gas, and finally the wonderful electric light, whose brilliant glow lighted up the threshold of the twentieth century. Petroleum, gas and electricity are also beginning to replace coal for heating and cooking purposes,--as coal replaced wood,--and an outlook into the future seems to reveal to us the marvelous electric energy performing these and a thousand other services; this energy yielded, not as now, by costly fuel dug from the earth, but by power derived from falling water, from moving air, from swelling tides and flowing currents, and even from the direct light and heat of the sun.

[=Howe and the Sewing Machine=]

We cannot undertake to describe in detail the inventions of the century, even all those of great service to mankind. A mere inventory of these would more than fill this chapter, and we must confine ourselves to the notable ones of American origin. Among the most important of these may be named the sewing machine, a device gradually approached through a century of effort, but not made workable until a poor mechanic named Elias Howe attacked the problem, and worked it out through years of penury and disappointment. It was the lock-stitch and shuttle to which he owed his success, but these devices, patented by him in 1846, were pirated by wealthy corporations, and years of litigation were necessary before he gained his rights. He finally obtained a royalty of five dollars for each machine made up to 1860, and, after the renewal of his patent in that year, one dollar for each machine. The numbers produced were sufficient to make him very wealthy, and by the time the original patents expired, in 1877, over six million machines had been produced and sold by American manufacturers alone. Aside from the vast number of sewing machines now used in families, those used in factories are estimated to give employment, throughout the world, to over 20,000,000 women.

[=Goodyear and the Vulcanization of Rubber=]

Another American invention of the greatest utility is that of vulcanized India-rubber, the production of a poor man named Charles Goodyear, who, like Howe, spent years of his life and endured semi-starvation while persistently experimenting. Beginning in 1834, it was 1839 before, after innumerable failures, he discovered the secret of vulcanizing the rubber by means of sulphur. Before that date the softening effect of heat rendered rubber practically useless, but the vulcanized rubber produced by Goodyear was, before his death in 1860, applied to nearly five hundred purposes, and gave employment to 60,000 persons in Europe and the United States. Since then its utility has very greatly increased, and its recent employment for bicycle and carriage tires opens up a new field for its use which must enormously increase the demand.

[=Morse and the Telegraph=]

Another of the famous inventions of the century, the electric telegraph, usually attributed to Samuel Finley Morse, should really be credited to the labors of several scientists both in Europe and America. The merit of Morse lay, not in the discovery of the principle of electric telegraphy, but in his simplified telegraphic alphabet, which has nearly driven out all other devices and has made its way throughout the world. Morse's first line, completed in 1844, was the pioneer of a development analogous to that of the railroad. To-day the telegraph runs over all continents and under almost all seas, the length of the telegraph lines in the world at the end of the century being over 5,000,000 miles, of which more than half were in America. The telephone--the marvelous talking telegraph--invented by Alexander Bell and developed in the final quarter of the century, now has over half a million miles of wire in the United States.

[=The Inventions of Edison=]

The mention of the telegraph and telephone calls to our attention one of the ablest and most prolific of American inventors, the indefatigable Thomas Alva Edison, to whom are due important discoveries in multiplex telegraphy--the sending of various messages at once over a single wire--in telephony, in the incandescent electric light, and other fields of research. Most surprising of his many discoveries is the marvelous phonograph, by which the sounds of the human voice may be put on permanent record, to speak again in their original tones years or centuries hence.

Other inventors have been active in this field, and extraordinary progress has been made in systems of telegraphy, some of the new inventions being capable of remarkable feats in the rapid sending of messages, while it is possible now to transmit pictures as well as words over the telegraphic wire.

[=Marconi and Wireless Telegraphy=]

So vast, indeed, has been the advance in this field of practical science, so many the applications and devices employed, and so wonderful the results, that it seemed as if the powers of telegraphy must be exhausted, when, at the very end of the century, one of its most remarkable results was announced, as the discovery of a young Italian named Marconi. This was the method of "wireless telegraphy," the sending of messages through the air without the aid of connecting wires. This discovery, like most others, cannot be credited to one man alone. A number of scientists were experimenting with it simultaneously, but to Marconi is due the honor of a successful and practical solution of the problem. It has long been known that electric energy can produce effects through space by the influence known as induction, in which a moving current causes a reverse current to appear in a neighboring wire. By aid of the very powerful currents now produced this effect may be shown at a considerable distance. Whether the action in wireless telegraphy is the result of induction, or of a direct passage of electricity through space, must be left for scientists to decide, but the results are astonishing, messages having been sent and received over distances of many miles. It is not well to state how many miles, since the system is still in its infancy, and before these words are read, for all that can now be affirmed to the contrary, a message may be sent in this manner from America to Europe.

Wireless telegraphy is a combination of science and invention. Scientifically the electric waves appear to flow out through the air in all directions from the powerful currents employed. Mechanically a lofty pole seems necessary, and by the aid of a directive contrivance the waves can be sent in a fixed course. In the Marconi contrivance, the electric waves, when received, are made to pass through a vial containing metal filings, which are caused to cohere so as to furnish a direct line of passage for the current. Marconi's special invention is a small tapper which strikes the vial of filings and causes them to fall asunder, thus breaking the current. The public at large, however, is likely to be more interested in results than methods, and in the system of wireless telegraphy there is promise of a development that may supplant all existing telegraphic systems during the century upon whose threshold we stand.

[=Labor-saving Agricultural Implements=]

In no field of effort have inventors been more active or their results more useful than in the production of labor-saving devices in agriculture. In these we have to do with the yield of food, the very corner-stone of life itself, and whatever seems to increase the product of the fields, or to cheapen the necessaries of life, is of the most direct and immediate utility to mankind. This subject, therefore, one of vital interest to all the farmers of our country, calls for special notice here.

[=Early Farming Tools=]

Great inventions are not necessarily large or costly. The scythe is a simple and inexpensive tool; yet the practical perfecting of it by Joseph Jenks, almost at the outset of farm-life in New England, formed an epoch-mark in agriculture. It was the beginning of a new order of things. Putting curved fingers to the improved scythe-blade and snath did for the harvester what had been done for the grass-cutter, gave him an implement which doubled or trebled his efficiency at a critical season, and furnished in the American grain cradle a farm-tool perfect of its kind, and likely to hold its place as long as grain is grown on uneven ground. For the great bulk of grain and grain-cutting, the scythe and the cradle have been displaced by later American inventions,--mowers and harvesters, operated by animal or steam power,--still they are likely to remain forever a part of every farm's equipment. Their utility is beyond computation.

[=The Development of the American plow=]

The plow supplied to the Colonial farmers, was as venerable as the reaping-hook. It had been substantially unimproved for four thousand years. The moment our people were free to manufacture for themselves, they set about its improvement in form and material, the very first patent granted by the National Patent Office being for an improved plow of cast-iron. The best plow then in use was a rude affair, clumsily made, hard to guide, and harder to draw. It had a share of wrought iron, roughly shaped by the roadside black-smith, a landside and standard of wood, and an ill-shaped mould-board plated with tin, sheet iron, or worn-out saw-plates. Only a stout man could hold it, and a yoke of oxen was needed for work that a colt can do with a modern plow. Its improvement engaged the attention of many inventors, notably President Jefferson, who experimented with various forms and made a mathematical investigation of the shape of the mould-board, to determine the form best suited for the work. He was the first to discover the importance of straight lines from the sole to the top of the share and mould-board. Pinckney discovered the value of a straight line from front to rear. Jethro Wood discovered that all lines, from front to rear, should be straight. The method of drafting the lines, on a plane surface, in designing plows, is due to Knox. The discovery of the importance of the centre-draught, and the practical means of attaining it by the inclination of the landside inward, is credited to Mears. Governor Holbrook, of New Hampshire, devised the method of making plows of any size symmetrical, so as to ensure the complete pulverization of the soil. Col. Randolph, Jefferson's son-in-law, "the best farmer in Virginia," invented a side-hill plow. Smith was the first to hitch two plows together; and Allen, by combining a number of small plow-points in one implement, led the way to the production of the infinite variety of horse-hoes, cultivators, and the like, for special use. But Jethro Wood, of New York, in 1819 and after, probably did more than any other man to perfect the cast-iron plow, and to secure its general use in place of the cumbrous plows of the earlier days. His skill as an inventor, and his pluck as a fighter against stolid ignorance and prejudice, for the advancement of sensible plowing, cost him--what they ought to have gained for him--a fortune. The use of cast-iron plows had become general by 1825.

[=Increase of Working Power of the Farmer=]

The construction of plows has since been taken up by a multitude of inventors, the most valuable of improvements, probably, coming through the use of chilled iron, and the most promising from the application of steam-power to plowing. The increase in the working power of the farmer, from American improvements in plows, may be estimated from the fact that two million plowmen, with as many teams, would need to work every day in the year with the primitive plow to prepare the soil annually under cultivation in this country. It would be impossible, under the ancient system, to do this work within the brief plowing season.

The era of agricultural machinery began about 1825, its earliest phase appearing in the application of horse-power to the threshing and cleaning of grain. Already the American tendency to seek practical results by the simplest means, and to make high-priced labor profitable by increasing its efficiency, had been shown in the improvement of a wide range of farmer's tools, almost everything they had to use being made lighter, neater, and more serviceable. The same improving, practical sense was displayed in devising more complicated labor-saving machines, which made it possible to do easily and directly what had been previously difficult or quite impossible to do. Too often, however, the early inventor was defeated by the lack of skilled labor and proper machine tools for making his improvements commercially successful. As soon as the mechanic arts had been sufficiently perfected and extended--largely by American genius--the development and production of agricultural machinery became rapid and profitable.

[=Threshing Machines and Their Performance=]

Washington had tried a sort of threshing machine as early as 1798; and one of the first patents issued by the Patent Office was for an improved thresher; yet the flail held the field until after 1825. In the following twenty-five years over two hundred patents were granted for improvements in threshers, and since then the patents have numbered thousands. By 1840, most of the grain was threshed by horse-driven machinery. In 1853, when a famous trial of rival threshers was held in England, the American machine did three times as much as the best English machine, and did it better. In a subsequent trial in France, the average work of experts with the flail being reckoned as one, that of the best French machine was twenty-five; of the best English machine, forty-one; while Pitt's American machine did the work of seventy-four. The application of steam-power greatly increased the efficiency of threshing machines, raising the output from perhaps 2,000 bushels a day to six or seven thousand for a single machine.

[=The American Reapers and Mowers=]

Still more significant and important have been the victories of American inventors in connection with mowers and reapers. The circumstance that reaping by machinery is as old as the Christian era, and that a multitude of comparatively modern attempts have been made, particularly in England, to apply horse-power to the cutting of grass and grain, only added to the merit of inventors like Hussey and McCormick, who practically solved the problems involved by means so simple and efficient that they have not been and are likely never to be entirely displaced. Hussey's mowing machine of 1833 had reciprocating knives working through slotted fingers, a feature not only new but essential to all practical grass and grain cutters, except the special type known as lawn-mowers. McCormick patented a combination reaper and mower in 1834, which he subsequently so improved as to make it the necessary basis of all reapers. In competitive trials at home and abroad, the American mowers and reapers have never failed to demonstrate their superiority over all others.

[=Harvesters and Self-binders=]

The first great victory, which gave these machines the world-wide fame they have so successfully maintained, was won in London in 1851. In the competitive trial near Paris, in 1855, the American machine cut an acre of oats in twenty-two minutes; the English in sixty-six minutes; the French in seventy-two. In the later competition, local and international, their superior efficiency has been not less signally manifested. By increasing the efficiency of the harvester twenty-fold (and twice that by the self-binders), these products of American invention have played a part second only to railroads in opening up the West to profitable cultivation, rapidly converting a wilderness into the granary of the world. Devices for binding grain as it was cut began to be developed about 1855. The first machine used wire binders; the later twine. The combination of reapers and threshers in one machine has been most largely developed in California. The largest in use there weighs eight tons; and, pushed by thirty mules, cuts a swath twenty-two feet wide and eighteen miles long in a day--over forty-eight acres, yielding about as many tons of wheat, which is cut, threshed, cleaned and deposited in 700 sacks. The machine employs a driver, a shearer, a knife-tender, and a sack-lowerer--four men, costing eight dollars a day for wages.

[=The Great Variety of Agricultural Implements=]

Less important individually, yet in the aggregate of incalculable assistance to agriculture, have been a multitude of American inventions intended to expedite and lighten the farmer's work--stump and stone extractors for clearing the ground, ditching machines for drainage systems, fencing devices, particularly the barbed wire fence, special plows for breaking up new ground, harrows of many types, seeders, planters, cultivators, horse rakes, hay tedders and hay loaders, potato and rock diggers, corn huskers and shellers, cotton pickers, and countless other labor-saving tools and devices. In most cases these improved appliances enable one man to do easily the work of several working with primitive tools. With the help of machine planters and seeders the farmer's work is made at least five times more efficient; with cultivators, ten times; with potato diggers, twenty; with harrowers, thirty; with mowers and harvesters, from twenty to fifty; with corn huskers and shellers, a hundred. The latest cotton harvester, employing a team, a driver, and a helper, does the work of forty hand-pickers.

These agricultural machines, by greatly cheapening all food products, have had a wider influence, probably, than any other group of American inventions. In connection with improvements in means of transportation--largely of American origin--they have changed the food conditions of half the world, making food more abundant, more varied, more wholesome, more secure, and vastly cheaper than ever before. At the same time they have lightened the farmer's labor, shortened his hours of toil, increased his gains, and quite transformed his social and industrial position.

[=Productive Activity of the Nineteenth Century=]

The marvelous evolution in the nineteenth century, of which we have mentioned only some of the more notable particulars, the whole story being far too voluminous to deal with here, has had the result of immensely increasing the wealth of the world and the cheapness and rapid distribution of products, and of placing within the ready control of mankind hundreds of articles of art and utility scarcely dreamed of a century ago. In textile production, in metal working, in the making of furniture, clothing and other articles of ordinary use, in heating and illumination, in travel and transportation of goods, farm operations, engineering, mining and excavation, and the production of the tools of peace and the weapons of war, in ways, indeed, too numerous to mention, the inventive activity and the industrial energy of the nineteenth century have added enormously to the variety and abundance of useful objects at man's disposal, increased his wealth to an extraordinary extent, and enabled him to move over land and sea with marvelous ease and speed, and to send information around the world with a rapidity that almost annihilates time and space.

[=Commerce of the United States=]

Not the least among the results of modern mechanical progress is the vast development in commerce, and particularly in that of the Anglo-Saxon people--the inhabitants of Great Britain and the United States--the commercial enterprise of which countries is nowhere else equalled. The ocean commerce of the United States, for instance, has nearly doubled within thirty years, and now amounts to nearly $2,000,000,000 worth of goods annually, two-thirds of which are articles of export. But this great sum is far from indicating the actual commerce of this country, since it is greatly surpassed by its interior commerce, the movement of goods by aid of river, canal, and railroad from part to part of the vast area of the United States, the extent of which commerce it is impossible even to estimate.

[=Wealth and its Sources=]

The statement of a single fact will suffice to put in striking prominence the result of this in increasing the value of property and the wealth of the people of this country. In the year 1801, the opening year of the century, the ideas entertained of riches differed remarkably from what they do now. At that time it is doubtful if there was a person in this country worth more than a quarter million of dollars. Thirty years afterwards, Stephen Girard, with an estate of about nine million dollars, was looked upon as a prodigy of wealth, and his reputation as a man of immense riches spread round the world. In 1900, the closing year of the century, there were single estates worth more than two hundred million dollars, and the number of millionairs in the United States could be counted by the hundreds. As regards the largest estates possessed in 1801, there are thousands among us with greater wealth to-day, while the general average of property possessed by our citizens has very greatly advanced.

If it be asked in what this wealth consists, it may be said that the railroad property of the country alone suffices to account for a considerable proportion of it. The assets of the railroads of the United States are valued at over $12,000,000,000, and the annual profits of their business amounts to a very great sum. Another immense source of wealth is the landed property of the United States, the annual product of which alone is worth over $3,000,000,000. A third great element of wealth consists in the dwellings and other buildings of cities and towns; and a fourth in the buildings and machinery of manufacturing enterprises, whose annual products alone are valued at more than $10,000,000,000. It will suffice here to name a fifth great source of wealth, our mines and their productions, particularly those of coal, iron and precious metals. The annual yield of coal alone is worth more than $200,000,000; that of iron more than $90,000,000; those of gold and silver more than $100,000,000. To these may be added an annual production of nearly $60,000,000 worth of copper, and as much of petroleum and its products--each of which nearly equals gold in value,--$12,000,000 worth of lead, and large values of other minerals; the grand total being over $750,000,000.

[=Expansion of Values During the Century=]

If these figures should be extended to cover the world, the total sum of values would be something astounding. What we are principally concerned with here is the fact that this vast total of wealth is very largely the result of nineteenth century enterprise, and mainly as applied in Europe and the northern section of North America. What the percentage of increase in value has been it is quite impossible to state, but the wealth of the world as a whole is probably more than double what it was a century ago, while that of such expanding countries as the United States has increased in a vastly greater proportion. That this growth in wealth will go on during the twentieth century cannot be doubted, but that the proportionate rate of increase will equal that of the century now at its end may well be questioned, the inventive activity and application of nature's forces within this century having reached a development which seems to preclude as great a future rate of progress. The nineteenth may, therefore, perhaps remain the banner century in material progress.