742 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for them, is that by due skill an ill-working humanity may be framed 

 into well-working institutions. It is a delusion. The defective natures 

 of citizens will show themselves in the bad acting of whatever social 

 structure they are arranged into. There is no political alchemy by 

 which you can get golden conduct out of leaden instincts. 



-o-*-- 



THE ELECTEIC KAILWAY. 



By Lieutenant BEADLEY A. FISKE, U. S. N. 



WITH most men who have not had time to follow the progress 

 made of late in applying electricity to the practical work of the 

 world, this form of energy is chiefly associated with certain experi- 

 ments at school, by which the tedium of book-studying was enlivened 

 with exhibitions of sparks and shocks and other curious and interest- 

 ing phenomena, though it may be also connected in their minds with 

 electric hair-brushes, electric corsets, magnetic clothing, etc. They 

 regard it also as convenient for sending dispatches by telegraph, and 

 in general for doing work where delicacy but not much force is requi- 

 site ; but the idea seldom occurs to them that this versatile power 

 is capable of swiftly moving the mightiest masses, as well as of 

 operating the tiniest apparatus ; of turning the wheels of ponder- 

 ous machinery, as well as of vibrating thousands of times per sec- 

 ond the little diaphragm of the telephone ; of conveying to far- 

 distant points the waste power of cataracts, as well as the minute 

 forces liberated by the telegraphic key, and of illuminating, with the 

 purest artificial light known, the most extensive and thickly popu- 

 lated cities. 



Doubtless, one great cause of the skepticism with which many re- 

 gard any project for using electricity upon a large scale is the fact 

 that exhaustive experiments in this direction were made in the early 

 part of the century, and the conclusion reached was that, though 

 power and light could both be distributed by electricity, yet the ex- 

 pense would be so enormous as to render impracticable any extended 

 electrical system. 



It should not be forgotten, however, that the only great trouble 

 found was the expense, and also that the principal source of this ex- 

 pense has been removed. In those days, the only way of generating 

 an electric current was by the use of the voltaic battery, in which the 

 electrical energy of the current was procured from the heat of the 

 chemical combination going on in the battery ; but in 1831 Faraday 

 discovered a much cheaper way of generating electricity, when he 

 found that it could be produced by simply moving magnets in the 



