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their way through the fog, arrived. For more than 24 hours 

 this drama of the ocean proceeded, while interested people 

 the world over, followed the progress of each event as it oc- 

 curred. No accident of modern times has better served to 

 illustrate the protection which modern science has thrown 

 about ocean travel, than the collision between these steam- 

 ships, the "Florida" and the "Republic." 



Equally great have been the changes which recent years 

 have wrought in the transportation upon the land. I have 

 been told that 60 years ago in this State of Illinois, the 

 corn crop of several years was allowed to accumulate in 

 anticipation of the coming of a proposed railroad which would 

 carry it on to market. In that day railroads were rare, while 

 to-day the country is covered with their network, the mileage 

 of the freight car wheels which traverse them exceeding 

 100,000 million every year. In passenger service the changes 

 are equally significant. The 18-hour specials running be- 

 tween Chicago and New York, proceed, day after day, with a 

 wonderful regularity of movement and pass long stretches 

 of track at speeds above 70 miles per hour. 



Now these achievements in transportation and travel, 

 which for the most part have been worked out within the 

 brief period of a hundred years, are not the result of chance ; 

 they are made possible through the existence of a wonderful 

 fabric of science and technology. A ship is designed for 

 strength by processes that are mathematically correct. Its 

 lines are laid down and the amount of power it is to have is 

 fixed with the certainty that a predetermined displacement 

 and speed will result. It is the same with the railroad, 

 steam and electric, with the transportation of power by elec- 

 tricity, and with the transportation of speech and thought 

 by telephony and telegraph. In alj of these directions success 

 in the development of practice has depended upon the se- 

 curity of a series of successive steps, each one of which has 

 been fundamental and in its time necessary to those that have 

 since followed it. A definition of these fundamental steps or 



