462 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



limited the supply of food, and made it confessedly inadequate to meet 

 the demands of a population increasing in a greatly disproportionate 

 ratio, also limited the opportunities for employment to such increasing 

 numbers apart from agriculture. Nearly and probably full one half 

 of all those who now earn their living in industrial pursuits, do so in 

 occupations that not only had no existence, but which had not even 

 been conceived of a hundred years ago. The business of railroad con- 

 struction, equipment, and operation, which now furnishes employment, 

 directly or indirectly, to about one tenth of all the population of the 

 United States engaged in gainful occupations, was wholly unknown in 

 1830. Apart from domestic or farm service little opportunity existed 

 for women to earn a livelihood by labor at the commencement of the 

 present century. 



The existence of the present populations of Europe and the United 

 States — nay, more, the continuance and progress of civilization itself — 

 has therefore been made possible solely through the invention and use of 

 the same labor-saving machinery, which not a few are inclined to regard 

 as likely to work permanent injury to the masses in the future. It is 

 still easy to avoid all trouble arising out of the use of labor-saving 

 machinery by going to the numerous countries — many of which are 

 rich in the bounties of Nature — which do not possess it. But these are 

 the very countries to which no person of average intelligence desires 

 to go. 



Restless and progressive humanity generally believes also, that 

 the continued betterment of the race is largely conditioned on the ex- 

 tension of free government based on 23opular reiDresentation and con- 

 stitutional safeguards ; and also on the successful continuation of the 

 experiment under such conditions which was entered upon by the peo- 

 ple of the United States just a hundred years ago. But the Govern- 

 ment of the United States, under its existing Constitution, has been 

 made possible only through the progress which man has made in re- 

 cent years in his knowledge and control of the forces of Nature. With- 

 out the perfected railroad and telegraph systems the war for the main- 

 tenance of the Federal Union under the existing Constitution could 

 not probably have been prosecuted to a successful conclusion ; and even 

 if no domestic strife had intervened, it is more than doubtful whether 

 a federation of numerous States, sovereign in many particulars — 

 floating down the stream of time like an elongated series of separate 

 rafts, linked together— could have been indefinitely perpetuated, when 

 the time necessary to overcome the distance between its extremities 

 for the mere transmission of intelligence amounted to from twenty to 

 thirty days.* 



In every highly-civilized country, where accurate investigations 

 have been instituted, the consumption of all the substantial articles of 



*When the battle of New Orleans was fought in 1815, more than twenty-two days 

 elapsed before the Government at Washington received any information of its occurrence. 



