Masterpieces of Science 



power is being steadily reduced in cost from 

 year to year, so that in many industries it has 

 but a minor place among the expenses of pro- 

 duction. The strength and profit of the factory 

 system lie in its assembling a wide variety of 

 machines, the first delivering its product to the 

 second for another step toward completion, and 

 so on until a finished article is sent to the ware- 

 room. It is this minute subdivision of labour, 

 together with the saving and efficiency that 

 inure to a business conducted on an immense 

 scale under a single manager, that bids us be- 

 lieve that the factory has come to stay. To be 

 sure, a weaver, a potter, or a lens-grinder of 

 peculiar skill may thrive at his loom or wheel at 

 home; buo such a man is far from typical in 

 modern manufacture. Besides, it is very ques- 

 tionable whether the lamentations over the home 

 industries of the past do not ignore evil con- 

 comitants such as still linger in the home in- 

 dustries of the present those of the sweater's 

 den, for example. 



This rapid survey of what electricity has done 

 and may yet do futile expectation dismissed 

 has shown it the creator of a thousand material 

 resources, the perfector of that communication 

 of things, of power, of thought, which in every 

 prior stage of advancement has marked the suc- 

 cessive lifts of humanity. It was much when 

 the savage loaded a pack upon a horse or an ox 

 instead of upon his own back; it was yet more 

 when he could make a beacon-flare give news or 

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