144 LAND AND LABOR. 



and in the Boott mills, in Lowell, lias been done and 

 is still doing in every mill in our country. 



In every business or industry requiring force there 

 is found a substitution of mechanical in place of mus- 

 cular power similar to that which has been shown to 

 have taken place in agriculture and in the production 

 of textile fabrics. It will be sufficient for the present 

 purpose to briefly refer to the general results attained 

 in a few of the myriad industries in which machinery 

 is now the great producing agent. 



There is no direction in which mechanical force has 

 wrought a greater revolution than in that of the pro- 

 duction and manufacture of iron and steel, and the 

 adaptation of those two metals to all the varied uses 

 of mankind. So great and multifarious have been 

 the advances in their use, in every direction in the 

 construction of naval and merchant shipping; in 

 colossal artillery and in all the enginery of war ; in 

 bridges, railways, locomotives, steam engines, farming 

 implements, and tools of every description, down to 

 what is by no means the least ingenious, wonderful, 

 or useful the production of the stamped pots, pans, 

 plates, basins, cups, and the thousand and one other 

 uses to which iron and steel are applied, under the 

 power of mechanical force, that they defy description 

 or examination. The stride of the present century, 

 from the primitive blast furnace and blacksmith's 

 forge and anvil, with the crude and inefficient hand 

 bellows, to the gigantic rolling mills, machine shops, 

 and pot and pan factories of to-day are marvels of 

 the age, and make it quite impossible to form a just 

 idea of how great has been the advance in this clasa 



