Septembee 13, 1895.] 



SGIENGE. 



323 



a machine with one man tending it. But I 

 find that Eobert Ellis Thompson in his 

 work on political economy (1875) mentions 

 the case of the pin industry in its modern 

 phase. He says: " An inventive mechanic 

 has put together a machine that only needs 

 to be fed with wire, well oiled and supplied 

 with steam power, to turn out complete 

 pins, sort them, and even thrust them into 

 the papers in the right numbers and in 

 straight rows." 



The example of the pin industry may be 

 taken as representative of what has taken 

 place in every branch of productive indus- 

 try. By the use of the steam engine and 

 of other machinery the productive power 

 of human labor has been increased a thous- 

 and fold, and engineering thus becomes the 

 most important force which has caused an 

 industrial and economic revolution through- 

 out the civilized world, and the one subject 

 of all others which should be discussed by 

 a political economist. 



Political economy being broadly the sci- 

 ence of wealth, and since wealth is prop- 

 erty, and property, according to some 

 writers of the socialist school, is robbery, it 

 may be well to get our bearings here, and 

 see whether wealth is a thing to be desired 

 or not. I quote here the words of Mr. Mc- 

 CuUpugh in his ' Introductory Discourse,' 

 above mentioned, and without further argu- 

 ment may say, that I agree with him en- 

 tirely : " The acquisition of wealth is not 

 desirable merely as the means of procuring 

 immediate and direct gratification, but as 

 being indispensably necessary to the ad- 

 vancement of society in civilization and re- 

 finement. Without the tranquillity and 

 leisure afforded by the possession of accu- 

 mulated wealth, those speculative and ele- 

 gant studies which expand and enlarge our 

 views, purify our taste, and lift us higher 

 in the scale of beings, can never be success- 

 fully prosecuted. It is certain, indeed, 

 that the comparative barbarism and re- 



finement of nations depend more upon the 

 comparative amount of their wealth than 

 on any other circumstance. It is impossi- 

 ble to name a single nation which has made 

 any distinguished figure either in philo- 

 sophy or the fine arts without having been 

 at the same time celebrated for its wealth." 



Having thus settled the question of the 

 desirability of wealth, let us consider what 

 is the engineer's share in its production. 

 The great forces of nature which the engi- 

 neer utilizes for the production of wealth 

 are the forces of wind and of running water, 

 and the stored energy of fuel in the forests, 

 peat bogs, coal mines and gas and oil wells. 

 By far the greatest of these forms of stored 

 energy is that of coal. Let us compare for 

 a moment the work that can be done by a 

 ton of coal with the muscular power of men . 

 One man digging coal from the side of a hill 

 can easily dig two tons, say 4,000 lbs. of 

 coal, in a day. Another man running a 

 boiler and engine can burn these same two 

 tons under a boiler, and if the engine is a 

 moderately good non-condensing engine 

 using 3 lbs. of coal per indicated horse- 

 power per hour, it will develop from the 

 two tons of coal 133 horse-power for 10 

 hom's, equivalent to the physical labor that 

 could be done by 1,300 men. Thus a man's 

 labor by means of coal and a steam engine 

 can be multiplied 650 times. But if we use 

 a large high-grade triple-expansion, con- 

 densing engine, it will require only half as 

 much coal per horse-power, and then if we 

 set the engine to work to mine the coal it- 

 self, through the agency of mining ma- 

 chinery, and to feed its own coal to the 

 boiler by means of automatic stokers, we see 

 that the efiectiveness of man's labor can be 

 still more vastly increased. 



Let us consider some of the results which 

 the engineer has been able to accomplish by 

 the utilization of coal. 



In my study of the subject of this address, 

 while I have failed to find it properly treated 



