THE CONQUEST OF NATURE 



short century. Nor need he be told in each of the 

 various departments of which the activities are here 

 outlined, that the changes which he observes have been 

 due to the application of machinery in all the essential 

 lines of work in question. We need not pause to detail 

 the multitudinous devices for the economy of household 

 labor which owe their origin to the same agency. There 

 still remains, to be sure, enough of drudgery in the task 

 of the housewife; yet her most strenuous day seems a 

 mere playtime in comparison with the average day of 

 her maternal forebear of three or four generations ago. 



But we must not here pause for further outlines of 

 a subject which it is the purpose of this and succeeding 

 volumes to explicate in detail. All our succeeding 

 chapters will but make it more clear how marvelous 

 are the elaborations of method and of mechanism 

 through which the world's work of to-day is accom- 

 plished. We shall consider first the mechanical prin- 

 ciples that underlie work in general, passing on to some 

 of the principal methods of application through which 

 the powers of Nature are made available. We shall 

 then take up hi succession the different fields of industry. 

 We shall ask how the work of the agriculturist is done 

 in the modern world; how the multitudinous lines 

 of manufacture are carried out; how transportation 

 is effected; we shall examine the modus operandi of 

 the transmission of ideas; we shall even consider that 

 destructive form of labor which manifests itself in the 

 production of mechanisms of warfare. As we follow 

 out the stories of the all-essential industries we shall 

 be led to realize more fully perhaps than we have done 



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