496 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



handled. As each sounding-board represents a piano, one can 

 easily estimate from this basis of observation alone the wonderful 

 dimensions of the piano trade. The unique business in Dolgeville 

 is well worthy of study as a curious example of American indus- 

 trial life. Its relation to the piano industry is apparent. 



In 1850 there were 204 establishments in this country making 

 musical instruments; piano-fortes were not separately reported 

 upon; 2,307 hands were employed, and the product represented 

 $2,580,715. We find that in 1860 21,707 pianos, representing 

 $6,518,432, were manufactured in the United States. The annexed 

 table of statistics shows the industry in 1880, and is the latest : 



When the statistics for 1890 appear, it will be found that the 

 increase in production has been even larger in proportion during 

 the last ten years. 



'• HowEYEE prophetic," says Mr. A. II. Green in Nature, "may have been the 

 far-seeing premonition of men in advance of their age in the dim past, and how- 

 ever invaluable may have been the additions made to the superstructure since, it 

 can scarcely be doubted that the foundation-stones of geology were Laid by Scotch- 

 men and Englishmen toward the end of the last and during the earlier part of the 

 present century. And what a charm there is about the story of those sturdy 

 pioneers — not perhaps quite the men whom one would have picked out as most 

 fitted or most likely to become the fathers of a new science ! It has about it the 

 elements of a genuine romance. For the early training of few of these men was 

 such as to give a scientific bent to their mind; tliey did not have what we are 

 pleased to call 'the advantage of a scientific education'; it is probable that they 

 never spoke, perhaps never dreamed of such a phrase as ' the scientific method,' 

 which we are so fond of formularizing, and on which we plume ourselves some- 

 what. But in spite of these seeming drawbacks, ratlier perhaps because with 

 these men genius was allowed to run its spontaneous, untrammeled course, they 

 opened out to mankind a domain of knowledge, the very outskirts of which had 

 been barely touched upon before. 



