348 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



And among the leaders of the world, nobly rivaling every other, 

 stands the ' Captain of Industry,' now rapidly developing into general 

 and field marshal. Note what this sort of man has done for the world ! 



The inventive mechanic and the engineer, learned or unlearned, 

 have, in the course of the nineteenth century, given to the world the 

 locomotive and our whole system of general continental and transcon- 

 tinental transportation, the steamship and all our contemporary ocean 

 and river, freight and passenger lines, the automobile and the beginnings 

 of a new and still more widely helpful system of common highway 

 transportation. They have given us the mowing and reaping machines 

 which have reduced the time and cost of harvesting to a tenth and less 

 of its former value; the seeding and the threshing machines which have 

 done as much in their special fields; the sewing and the knitting ma- 

 chines which have given the sewing woman and the housewife multi- 

 plied working power with minimized exertion and reduced working 

 hours. They have provided the power-printing press with its almost 

 miraculous speed and accuracy of printing, counting, folding and bind- 

 ing together the sheets of a metropolitan newspaper 100,000 an hour; 

 the type-setting machine and the linotype, making easy and productive 

 in hardly less degree the labor of the type-setter; the whole machinery 

 of modern textile manufacturers with its multiplied efficiency and the 

 iron and steel industry, the fundamental element of civilization. 



The electrician and the mechanical engineer have provided us with 

 the electric current in useful and infinitely pliable form, transmitting 

 energy of all mechanical prime motors from the source, or point of sur- 

 render of energy by nature, to the point of application, a mile, ten miles 

 or a hundred miles away, with little loss and with vast convenience and 

 economy. The engineer is even furnishing power for use in trans- 

 mitting messages over the telegraph wire. In our homes, steam-heat, 

 ventilation and sanitary life come largely of the inventions, the con- 

 structions and the operative mechanism of the engineer, who provides 

 the steam-boiler, the water supply, the forced ventilation, all unknown 

 to our fathers, luxuries to many still, but which will become the ordinary 

 and commonplace comforts of the great mass of the people in the com- 

 ing century. 



The mechanic and the engineer have provided us with iron ships 

 and naval armaments, the battle-ship and the torpedo-boat, the ' sub- 

 marine,' and guns that have a range of ten to twenty miles. They are 

 thus doing practically all that is actually being done, at the time — they 

 have done practically all that has been done during the century — to- 

 ward making an end of war by making weapons too effective to permit 

 their use by nations except in desperation and under extreme provoca- 

 tion. Under such provocation, in the future as in the past, nations 

 will probably make war; but it is the engineer, probably, who will 



