3B4
THE WEST SHORE.
THE) AOS OF STEAM.
. Y most people of a fuir degree
of intelligence it is undenttood,
in a general way, that the won
derful progress the world has
made within the past few
years, its increase in popula
tion, the development of new
countries and the ever increasing
abundance of "thing," are due
to the employment of the jjowers
of nature in relieving mankind
from physical toil; but fowof the
moat intelligent appreciate the ex
tent to which this is true. Not
long ago Mr. Gladstone said that
England had amassed more wealth
in this century than in all the previous eighteen hundred
years of the Christian era. Our own government has
lMn founded and our wealth dovoloped in the same pe
riod. The brilliant Aryan race, tho progressive race of
mankind, which has dovoloed tho civilizations of India
and of Persia, of Greece and Home, of Gormany and
France, of England and the United States, within this
ix-riod lias incrensed from one hundred and twenty mil
lions to four hundred millions.
From the romote past this race has boon toiling
and striving, waging a ceaseless war against nature and
circumstances, but until the invention of moans to util
ixo the xwor of steam century after century passed with
little difference in its numbers; but as soon as we come
within the magic influence of steam, suddenly, as Hittoll
says, " The Aryan race, acquiring tho power to draw
crops from the soil, to distribute thorn more evenly,
thus preventing disease and famino, and also to visit
new and moro proflUblo fluids of industry, multiplies so
as to keep paco with tho increased supply of food and
with the demand for lalxr."
If we attempt to recount tho achievements of this
increasing Mipulatiou. we must uso figures so vast that
they make but little impression upon tho mind. It is
only by coinarison of our abundance with the lack of our
near ancestors that their magnitude can be appreciated.
During tho closing years of the last century, Burke, 1'itt,
and Hheridau were borne through the streets of Loudon
by chair-men, and in Paris stalwart men were making a
livelihood by carrying ladies upon their backs across
the mud of the streets. Not a hundred years have
elapsed since tho owners of riding horses petitioned the
English parliament to forbid the establishment of a
stage coach line, which had lately been started and was
ruining their business. At tho beginning of the present
century, in our own country, aU cloth was manufactured
upon the household spinning wheel aud loom, and the
wages of women in spinning, weaving and doing the
work of the household were fifty cents a week, or twenty-five
dollars per annum, beside board. The hour was
ginsmed by the height of the sun almve the horizon, ex
cept by some of the well-to-do who could afford to pay
fifty dollars, the price of an ox, for a clock. It was not
till 17C7, just before the American revolution, that the
second saw mill was erected in Great Britain, and this,
like the first one, was demolished by a mob of sawyer?,
who said that it was taking the bread out of their
mouths. At that date, however, there were many milla
in this country manufacturing lumber for the home de
mand, or for export to Cuba and England. It is within
the memory of some readers of The West Shoke, when,
in this country, the worn or bent pewter spoons were re
cast in the family spoon mould, when the boot maker
wont from house to houae with his kit of tools to make
new shoes or cobblo old ones, and the tailoress, with
goose and press-board, was another welcome itinerant.
Within a hundred years farmers have thrown away the
wooden plow. The iron mould-board was first perfect
ed, if not invented, in the United States, by which the
working capacity of the plowman, and the productive ca
pacity of the soil were each perhaps more than doubled.
Since the adoption of the iron plow, France, with a
smaller number of men engaged in the business, pro
duces three times as much wheat at an average harvest.
Two centuries ago, England, with an estimated popula
tion of five and a half millions, produced less than half
a million bushels of wheat, which would give but one
and a half pints of flour to each individual per annum.
Even as late as 1850, the estimated amount of tonnage
transported throughout this country was four hundred
pounds for each individual. Now it is more than ten
times that amount The six New England States pay
the West more than sixty million dollars annually for
wheat and corn. They pay, of course, in manufactured
goods; they could pay in nothing else. This gives us some
idea of the vast oonsequonce of transportation to our
present welfare and future growth.
Without railroads, the New England states would be
reduced to starvation in loss than a month, for New
Hampshire produces only bread enough to last her pop
ulation about twenty-eight days, while Massachusetts
produces but one day's supply, and Rhode Island does
not raise enough for breakfast On the other hand, tho
West, without railroads, would bo thrown back to the
limitations of 1840, without being in a condition to en
dure them as woll as at that time. A bushel of corn, worth
in tho market seventy-five cents, will bear transporta
tion by horses only one hundred and twenty-five in Pes,
and a bushel of wheat worth one dollar and fifty cents
will eat itself np, as the farmers say, if hauled more
than two hundred and fifty miles. This is at the rate of
twenty cents per ton per mile. The great trunk rail
roads, however, transport breadstuffs from the Missis
sippi valley to the Atlantic cities for a half a cent a ton ,
per mile. The locomotive engines in the United States
have a capacity equal to the work of more than twelve
times the whole number of horses. The steam engines
in use throughout the world furnish a power estimated
to be equal to that of more than three hundred million
workmen, and the saving of labor by other machines is