718 TECHNOLOGY AND CIVILIZATION. 



we are directly surrouuded in our dwellings by thousands of obstruc- 

 tion works which hav^e made our rooms safe, comfortable, and conven- 

 ient for light, air, and warmth. We may overlook this because natur- 

 istical labor is able to produce similar, although less iierfect, results. 

 But let us notice other things whereby our dwellings have received their 

 character. There is the gas-light in the house, on the street, in the 

 public building. We may thank for it a chemical tension work of the 

 fourth order — fire, retort, gasometer, conduction by stop-cocks, passing 

 by all intermediate works — all of them important, all ramifying through 

 the city pipes. The water for house and street necessity, when taken 

 from a river- water conduit, furnishes a drive work of at least the sixth 

 order. Upon the railroad we move by drive work of a higher order, 

 regulate the powerful service with another, by means of drive works 

 permit freight to be carried on the rails from place to place, from land 

 to land, from one part of the earth to another, a thousand-fold more than 

 a person could carry. Throughout the earth by means of physical drive 

 work we have the messenger service, both written and spoken. 



How fare we in war? In millions of chemical tension works, large 

 and small, generally of higher order, we carry the driving force to the 

 distant battlefield and there set it free by means of a high order of drive 

 works. 



Upon the ocean we are carried hundreds of miles from land, for weeks 

 and months, by means of tension-work activity. 



Eich productions, such as coal, we have gained from nature. The 

 naturistical man early found upon the high mountain range the water 

 course, that running work subordinated to tension work, and very 

 likely the future will briug to light other products, such as petroleum, 

 which we may say was discovered three decades ago. This product is a 

 highly elastic chemical tension work fitted to play its part under a clear 

 flame. In reality it is a combination of two or more chemical tension 

 works, each under such slight restraint as to free itself invisibly. 



We had, therefore, to submit tliis product of nature to a process of 

 separation, according to the mauganistical principle, into groups of 

 small parts easily liberated and on which the tension work was first 

 transmissible and generally applicable. Police directions required 

 that if the product were made an article of trade the obstruction (sper- 

 rung) should be a safe one; but how favorable has been the result. 

 This fluid tension work discovered, as it were, " ready made " in nature 

 for purposes of illumination, has displaced those products which, by 

 the aid of noticeable mauganistical implements had previously been 

 obtained from the seeds of plants. Let us turn to another phase of 

 tension work. The conflagration is but an invisible liberating of a chem- 

 ical tension work, as is well proved. The obstruction ratchet is raised in 

 opposition to our will with ever-increasing rapidity and the powerful, 

 liberated tension work often overleaps our control, but we bring to bear 

 upon it for the- i)urpose of its capture, another driv^e work, formerly 

 pperated by main strength oply, but now usually by chemical tension- 



