Evolution of the Mechanic Arts. 213 



for the purpose of tracing the effects of the cotton-gin, and 

 the absence of co-ordinately developed mechanical arts, in 

 the South, upon the character and history of the typical 

 Southerner, and upon the past and future welfare of the 

 entire country. 



At this writing I hear of a single typical case of 

 benefit to the laborer, where a man known to me is 

 now earning one hundred dollars per month as a mere 

 attendant upon the machinery employed in making illumi- 

 nating gas, who forty years ago would have done well in 

 securing steady employment at 87 1-2 cents per day. And 

 there are many college graduates who are not earning or 

 receiving so much. In fact, the laboring class has obtained 

 the advantage over all other classes except the large cap- 

 italists by beginning agitation and discussion years since. 

 It is time for these other classes to take up agitation and 

 discussion, for their salvation is now at stake. They are 

 between the upper and the nether mill-stones. 



The fifth question concerns the human body. Accord- 

 ing to the teaching of Spencer, Darwin and Romanes, 

 already quoted, the connection between advancing brain and 

 muscular co-ordination having been severed by machinery, 

 and the day of a new kind of advance through mental and 

 supplemental material, or natural mechanical co-ordination, 

 having finally come, chiefly in our own time, but little 

 developmental change of plan or structure of the human 

 body is to be expected or is possible, altliough, doubtless, 

 rounded perfection of development, harmony and beauty 

 of outline, as well as general increase of strength and 

 endurance, and certainty and length of days, may be 

 looked for. 



It remains to consider the effects of machinery and 

 inventions upon the human mind, and upon the progress of 

 civilization in the ages to come. 



Can anyone who has followed the history of the 

 primordial germ, in its progress from a mere <' faculty of 

 responding to resistance " as its " fundamental sense," up 

 to man with all his mental capacities, believe that the 

 mental evolution of man is to stop now, when he has but 

 barely entered upon that advance which is independent of 

 muscular co-ordination ? It is this emancipation of his 

 adjustive powers which has brought him into correlation 

 with the universe, through the additional senses, limbs 



