IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 25 



and beverages from Japan and Java and the valley of the 

 Amazon. In the United States alone there are now^ in 

 operation nearly 200,000 miles of railway, carrying yearly 

 one billion tons of freight and 550 millions of passengers. 



The carriage of power is accomplished at present almost 

 wholly by the transportation of fuel. The value of this 

 service may be seen by contrast with some railroadless 

 country such as China, where according to Colquhon, 

 coal selling at the mine at fifteen cents per ton, cost as 

 many dollars ten miles away. But the future doubtless 

 has in store the distribution of power as an article of mer- 

 chandise. The possibility of long distance transmission of 

 electricity has already been demonstrated at Niagara, and 

 the time may be near when in our cities power from coal 

 field or waterfall may be purchased for use in factory 

 and home as readily as water or gas today. 



What has already been said of the debt of industry to 

 science in the development of its motive powers applies 

 here equally in transportation. Permit a single illustra- 

 tion further of the value of pure science in the evolution 

 of the circulatory system. Every engineer is aware of the 

 large contribution which the steel rail has made to the 

 success of the railway. Durable, strong and cheap, it has 

 displaced on all our railways the weak and short-lived rail 

 of iron. It has made possible heavier trains and higher 

 speeds. Together with other factors it has so cheapened 

 traction that, according to Professor J. J. Stevenson, the 

 coal of West Virginia is now sold at New York City for less 

 than one-fourth the railway freight charges of a quarter 

 of a century ago. But it is no belittlement of the laurels 

 of Sir Henry Bessemer, the inventor who has made all this 

 possible, to point to the fact that the success of his pro- 

 cess which, by ushering out the Age of Iron and ushering 

 in the Age of Steel, has revolutionized industry and 

 touched every home with its beneficence, is due not only 

 to his use of a great body of facts in the chemistry of the 

 metals, but in especial to the utilization by Mushet of the 

 facts regarding the influence of manganese and its relation 

 to carbon, — facts ascertained in the laboratories of science 



