280 POWER AND THE PLOW 



less than 1000 hours per year, the engine in the power plant 

 works double that or more. Beween 1890 and 1905 animal 

 power on the farm increased a third, while mechanical power 

 in factories increased 146 per cent. Laborers, too, flocked 

 to the factories, and in the same time the excess in number of 

 farm over factory workers fell from 75 to 35 per cent. 



From transporting men and materials from place to place 

 arises the third great need for power. Originally, this work was 

 done by the human muscle; man walked, carrying a load on 

 his back. Later, he learned to harness the animal, and down 

 through the Middle Ages to the beginning of our century, 

 animals drew the freight of the world over country roads in 

 wagons. With the invention of Stephenson, who applied the 

 power of steam in the field of transportation, came our modern 

 railway net that to-day encircles the earth, and bears a steam- 

 driven commerce that has linked the nations together. Just 

 a century ago Fulton applied the power of steam to water 

 transportation. 



Artificial power has been applied to commercial transporta- 

 tion as to no other industry. Leaving out of consideration 

 the electric railways, automobiles and all other forms of motor 

 traction, and considering only the railways, we must try hard 

 if we grasp the magnitude of the force that has pushed civili- 

 zation from coast to coast and filled up every foot of promising 

 area between. Five years ago the farm employed eight 

 laborers to the railway's one, but the railway put into that 

 one man's hand sixty horsepower, to two for the average farm 

 hand. The railway forged ahead of the farm in power installed 

 little more than a decade ago. Now it is adding power and 

 men much faster than the farm, and enormously increasing 

 its wealth and influence. Ten years ago, five horsepower worked 

 to transport each passenger across the sea in ships. Now, on 

 the Lusitania, already overtopped by a more powerful rival, 

 thirty horsepower are throbbing in the engine room to bear 

 him on with greater speed and comfort. Four times the poten- 



