208 FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 



OUE INDEBTEDNESS TO INVENTOES AND MECHANICS. 



BY LEWIS m' LOUTH, PKOF. OF MECHANICS, AGEICULTHRAL COLLEGE. 



When I speak of oi;r indebtedness to inventors I do not mean peddlers of 

 patent rights, or patent gates, drive wells, hay forks, washing machines, hen 

 coops, and churns. Those venders generally get all that is due them, and 

 often a great deal more. I mean rather those men who spend their energies in 

 study and toil and who often suffer want in life and die in penury, but who 

 leave the world richer by some such great labor saving device as the steam 

 •engine, the sewing marhine, or the McCormick reaper. To these men and to 

 the skilled practical mechanic whom the inventor has usually to call to his 

 aid before his idea or his device can be perfected and brought into practical, 

 ■every day use the world is under a heavy debt of gratitude. The great inventor 

 is often a dreaming genius, and his most useful contrivauces have had usually 

 to wait for the mechanic and the practical business man, who do not dream, to 

 perfect and bring them into general use. Fulton was not the inventor of 

 steamboats: for steamboats had been made and Fulton himself had ridden 

 upon them years before his practical mechanical skill and Chancellor Living- 

 eton's money made steam navigation an important part of the world's industry. 

 Morse added not one principle or discovery to our knowledge of electricity and 

 -electro-magnetism, and yet his practical knowledge and mechanical skill, 

 seizing upon principles already well known, gave to the world the telegraph. 



It is indeed usually sonie practical mechanic without any genius, except the 

 genius of industry and perseverance, who completes and brings to our notice 

 the inventions of greater but less practical men. There is occasionally an ex- 

 ceptional, or perhaps, fortunate inventor, who, like Edison or Bell, has himself 

 the practical knowledge and tact either to perfect and bring his own invention 

 into use, or else to gather about him practical men who will do it for him, and 

 thus enable him to reap a good share of the fruits of his own ingenuity. 



Our indebtedness is, therefore, fully as much to the skillfiil mechanic as to 

 the inventor, and how much this indebtedness is we can hardly conceive. All 

 •our material comforts, conveniences, and possessions are due to the inventor 

 ^nd mechanic, and even the leisure and strength that have enabled us to arrive 

 at our present high intellectual status, — yes, the very refinements and the 

 •ennob ing impulses that distinguish our civilization as Christian, have only 

 been gained through the help of those mechanical devices which have so greatly 

 Telieved us from the constant drudgery and toil of getting food and shelter. 

 The low savage that must hasten naked and shivering from his cave-home to 

 hunt long and weary for his raw food, with stone or bludgeon for weapon, has 

 no time nor incentive for high mental effort, and moral beauty is impercep- 

 tible to his undeveloped moral sense. Little moral or intellectual progress can 

 be made by men who suffer daily from cold or hunger. And so the earliest 

 inventions were those rude and simple ones that furnished primeval man the 

 weapons and the tools that enabled him to get food, clothing, and shelter 

 more easily and in greater abundance. The inventions that gave us luxuries, 

 •ornaments, music, pictures, books and literatures came a great while later. 



Most of us, I think, realize with difficulty how much invention and mechani- 

 -cal skill have added to our comfort and conveniences since the beginning of 

 TThat the historian would call modern times. We are mostly unaware that so 

 •common an article as a table fork, at the time Columbus discovered America, 



