226 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ture to perform a greater feat than placing all mankind within 

 earshot of each other. "Were electricity unmastered, there could 

 be no democratic government of the" United States. To-day the 

 drama of national affairs is more directly in the view of every 

 American citizen than a century ago the public business of Dela- 

 ware could be to the men of that little State. Railroads, with all 

 they mean for civilization, could not have been born without the 

 telegraph; and railroads and telegraphs are the sinews and 

 nerves of national life, the prime agencies in welding together 

 the diverse and widely separated States and Territories of the 

 Union. A Boston merchant builds a cotton mill in Georgia ; an 

 Illinois manufacturer establishes an agency in Seattle ; the tele- 

 graph, which informs them day by day how their investments 

 prosper, tells idle men where they can find work, where work 

 can seek idle men. Chicago is laid in ashes, Charleston topples 

 in earthquake, Johnstown is whelmed in flood, and instantly a 

 continent rises to their relief. And benefits denied to charity 

 issue in the strictly commercial services of the telegraph. Its 

 click has exorcised the fiend of famine from every quarter of the 

 civilized globe ; for, with its finger on the throttle-valves of loco- 

 motive and steamship, no longer does food rot here when thou- 

 sands lack bread there ; the markets of the world are merged, and 

 that one great market reaches every man's door. 



In a less conspicuous way electricity works equal good. Its 

 motor, freeing us from the horse's deliberate pace, is spreading 

 out our towns and cities into their adjoining country ; field and 

 garden compete with narrow streets ; the sunny cottage is in 

 rivalry with the odious tenement house. Electric lines, at first 

 suburban, are now fast linking town to town and city to city, 

 while as auxiliaries to steam railroads they place sparsely settled 

 districts in the arterial current of the world. Great as are the 

 blessings which electricity brings to country folk, it stands ready 

 to bestow yet more in the hives of population. Until a few dec- 

 ades ago the water supply of cities was drawn in part from wells 

 here and there, from lines of piping laid in favored areas, and al- 

 ways insufficient. To-day a supply such as that of New York is 

 abundant and cheap because it enters every house. Let a single 

 electrical service enjoy a like privilege, and it can offer a current 

 which is heat, light, chemical energy, or motive power at a wage 

 lower than that of any other servant. Unwittingly, then, the 

 electrical engineer is a political reformer of high degree. All 

 that he asks is that this municipal electricity shall be under con- 

 trol at once competent and honest. Let us hope that his plea, 

 joined to others as weighty, may quicken the spirit of civic right- 

 eousness so that some of the richest fruits ever borne in the gar- 

 den of art and science may not be proffered in vain. 



