18 THE TIME FACTOR IN THE PROBLEM. 



sages annually transmitted is estimated at 300,000,000J 

 Our century has been distinguished by a rising flood of 

 inventions. The English government issued more pat- 

 ents during the twenty years succeeding 1850 than dur- 

 ing the two hundred and fifty years preceding. 



But this has not been simply a mechanical era of 

 marvelous material progress. With the exception of as- 

 tronomy, modern science, as we now know it, is almost 

 wholly the creation of the nineteenth century. In this* 

 century, too, have the glorious fruits of modern mis- 

 sions all been gathered. Another evidence of progress 

 which, if less obvious than material results, is more con- 

 clusive, is found in the great ideas which have become 

 the fixed possession of men within the past hundred 

 years. Among them is that of individual liberty, which 

 is radically different from the ancient conception of 

 freedom that lay at the foundation of the Greek and Ro- 

 man republics, and later, of the free cities of Italy. 

 Theirs was a liberty of class, or clan, or nation, not of 

 the individual; he existed for the government. The 

 idea that the government exists for the individual is 

 modern. 



From this idea of individual liberty follows logically 

 the abolition of slavery. At the close of the eighteenth 

 century slavery existed almost everywhere — in Russia, 

 Hungary, Prussia, Austria, Scotland, in the British, 

 French, and Spanish colonies, and in North and South 

 America. It is said that during the first seven years of 

 this century English ships conveyed across the Atlantic 

 280,000 Africans, one-half of wh(*m jDerished amid the 

 horrors of the "middle passage," or soon after landing. 

 But this century has seen slavery practically destroyed 

 in all Christendom. 



Another idea, which, like that of individual liberty, 

 finds its root in the teachings of Christ, and has grown 

 up slowly through the ages to blossom in our own, is 

 that of honor to womanhood, whose fruitage is woman's 



» The World Almanac, 1890. 



