THE TIME FACTOK IN THE PROBLEM. 17 



the human hand performed all the work that was done, 

 and performed it badly." Methods of travel and com- 

 munication were as primitive as those of manufacture. 

 ' ' Toward the close of the eighteenth century Lord Camp- 

 bell accomplished the journey from Edinburgh to Lon- 

 don in three days and three nights. But judicious friends 

 warned him of the dangers of this enterprise, and told 

 him that several persons who had been so rash as to at- 

 tempt it had actually died from the mere rapidity of the 

 motion. 1 " In August, 1888, the same journey was made 

 by the Great Northern route (392 miles) in seven hours 

 and thirty-two minutes. And that year the railways of 

 Great Britain conveyed upwards of 742,000,000 passen- 

 gers. ^ It took Dr. Atkinson eight months to go from 

 New England to Oregon in 1847. When he returned the 

 journey occupied six days. When the battle of Water- 

 loo was fought (1815) all haste delivered the thrilling dis- 

 patches in London three days later. The news of the 

 bombardment of Alexandria (1882) was received in the 

 English capital a few minutes after the first shell was 

 thrown. 



Any one as old as the nineteenth century has seen a 

 very large proportion of all the progress in civilization 

 made by the race. When seven years old he might have 

 seen Fulton's steamboat on her trial trip up the Hudson. 

 Until twenty years of age he could not have found in all 

 the world an iron plow. At thirty he might have trav- 

 eled on the first railway passenger train. In 1889 the 

 world had 359,071 miles of railway.^ For the first thirty- 

 three years of his life he had to rely on the tinder-box 

 for fire. He was thirty-eight when steam communica- 

 tion between Europe and Amedca was established. He 

 had arrived at middle life (forty -four) when the first tele- 

 gram was sent. Forty -three years later the world had 

 780,433 miles of telegraph lines, and the number of mes- 



^ Mackenzie's History of the Nineteenth Century. 

 ' The Statesman's Year-Book, 1890. 

 3 The World Almanac, 1890. 



