PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 879 
I have already pointed out that it is estimated that the steam 
engines alone now engaged actively in the production of man’s 
real and nominal wealth, represent double the potential muscular 
force of all men in the world at the present time, exceeding the 
muscular force of men actually engaged in the production of 
man’s wealth by, perhaps, three or four times. The mere muscular 
pressure of a man, which, on his part, only exhausts his muscular 
energy by what would be equivalent to the movement of his body 
by one step, may, and, in fact, now incessantly does liberate and 
set in motion a transporting force in one machine equal to the 
combined total muscular force of from 200,000 to 500,000 men. 
At the present moment, on the railways of Pennsylvania, in 
America, a single engine conveys a load of 1,500 tons 29,927 
miles in one year. Tt would, in a primitive stage—say by the 
strong African carriers of Stanley—take the mere muscular force 
of 465,360 men, carrying 60 lb. weight, and travelling at the rate 
of 12 miles per day, to accomplish the same work in the same 
time ; and even though they only received wages at the rate of 
ls. per day, it would cost £6,980,400; at 5s. per day it would 
cost £34,902,000. The single Pennsylvanian engine, however, 
carries the same load, viz., 1,500 tons 29,927 miles within one 
year for the sum of £92,721, or $d. per ton per mile—that is, a 
single modern locomotive exerts as much wealth-producing energy 
as could be effected by the whole muscular force of 465,360 strong 
men, and at ;1, of the nominal cost. Even if we went into 
refinements, and attempted to abstract the human muscular 
energy expended in the manfacture of the engine from raw 
materials, and the consumption of stores and materials consumed 
in the work, also partly the produce of the muscular force of man, 
it would be more than covered by the subtraction of the muscular 
energy of 600 men, leaving still to the credit of the single machine 
a balance of natural physical wealth-producing energy—1.e., non- 
muscular—equivalent to the muscular energy expended of 464,760 
men during one year. 
When, in addition, we think of the spinning jenny, the electric 
telegraph, the sewing-machine, and the thousand complicated 
forms of machinery, such as the Naismith Polka Hammer, which, 
by the slight pressure upon a handle, can instantaneously pour 
100-ton blows upon ductile masses of iron, we can have some 
faint conception of the immense mechanical and natural forces 
ever at work in civilised countries, outside of the muscular force 
exerted by man, and contributing their giant share of the 
physical agencies which give commercial value to man’s wealth. 
It is clear, therefore, nothing can be further from the truth than 
the assumption by the majority of Socialists, that the energy of 
the “lower ten millions,” or “the masses,” alone represent the 
active factor that produces all wealth. 
