INVENTION AND AIvIERICAN WEALTH 271 



asking it to issue fiat paper money and loan it to the peo- 

 ple, and Pennsylvania actually did this. 



It was this condition of affairs that finally resulted in the 

 constitutional convention of 1787, which conferred on con- 

 gress the powers under which the United States have since 

 grown to their present estate. Among those powers the two 

 most important, so far as national prosperity is concerned, are, 

 the power to regulate commerce and impose duties on imports 

 for the twofold purpose of raising revenue and protecting the 

 then infant industries, and the power to promote the progress 

 of science and useful arts b}^ the grant of patents. 



Under the exercise of those powers America has grown 

 and prospered as no other nation on earth has. What that 

 growth has been may be epitomized by saying that from that 

 little beginning in 1790, the United States have grown until 

 to-day they do one third of the world's manufacturing, one 

 third of its mining, one fifth of its farming, and possess one 

 fifth of its wealth. 



Years ago, Gladstone, in his book entitled Kin Beyond 

 the Sea, said: "America will probably become what we are 

 now — the head serv^ant in the great household of the w^orld, 

 because her service will be most and the ablest." 



Already America has reached that point, for as Mulhall, 

 the British statistician, recently said: ''If we take a survey 

 of mankind in ancient or modern times, as regards the physical 

 and intellectual force of nations, we find nothing to compare 

 with the United States. The physical and mechanical power 

 which has enabled a community of woodcutters and farmers 

 to become, in about 100 years, the greatest nation in the 

 world, is the aggregate of the strong arms of men and women, 

 aided by horsepower, machinery, and steam power, applied 

 to the useful arts and sciences of everyday life." 



When the writer was born there was not a mile of railway 

 in the United States. To-day there are 186,000 miles m daily 

 use, with a total of nearly 250,000 miles of track — as much 

 as all the rest of the world. A locomotive running 30 miles 

 an hour, 24 hours a day, without a single stop, would consume 

 almost an entire year to traverse the whole extent. One of 

 these roads alone carries more tonnage annually than all the 



