Septembee 13, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



325 



had to decay, and history, though vague, 

 shows its lapse into a barbarism as dark as 

 that from which it had emerged. 



" Modern civilization also has at its base 

 a toiling slave, but one differing widely 

 from his predecessor of the ancients. He 

 is without nerves and he does not know 

 fatigue. There is no intermission in his 

 work, and he performs in a small compass 

 more than the labor of nations of human 

 slaves. He is not only vastly stronger, but 

 vastly cheaper than they. He works in- 

 terminably, and he works at everything ; 

 from the finest to the coarsest he is equally 

 applicable. He produces all things in such 

 abundance that man, relieved from the 

 greater part of his servile toil, realizes for 

 the first time his title of Lord of Creation. 

 The products of all the great arts of our 

 civilization, the use of cheap and rapid 

 transportation on land and water, and of 

 printing, density of population everywhere, 

 the instruments of peace and war, the ac- 

 quisition of knowledge of all kinds, are 

 made the possibility and the possession of 

 all by the labor of this obedient slave, 

 which we call Steam Engine. 



" We who were born under this benign 

 influence but vaguely appreciate its value, 

 and rarely recognize our obligations to it ; 

 existing civilizations would be impossible 

 without it, and if human ingenuity finds 

 no substitute for it they will perish with it. 



" The steam engine is a machine which 

 has been the prolific parent of other ma- 

 chines. It has caused the invention and 

 construction of the immense plant of in- 

 genious power tools employed in its own 

 fabrication ; it has caused the improvement 

 of metallurgy as a science and of the various 

 methods of metal manufacture as an art; it 

 may be said to have created whole branches 

 of important manufacture, and to have been 

 the occasion of the invention of the immense 

 mass of highly-diversified machinery, by 

 means of which these manufactures are 



practiced ; and, last and greatest, it has 

 stimulated and directed the human intellect 

 as nothing else ever has, and has done more 

 to advance human nature to a higher plane 

 than all which statesmen, generals, mon- 

 archs, philosophers, priests and artists have 

 ever accomplished in the vast interval which 

 separates original man from the man of to- 

 day. It has raised man from an animal to 

 something approaching what a great intelli- 

 gence should be, by simply x^lacing in his 

 hands a limitless physical power capable of 

 application in every conceivable direction 

 and to every conceivable purpose." 



The value of the invention of Bessemer 

 steel to the human race is discussed as fol- 

 lows in an address by Mr. Abram S. Hewitt 

 in 1890 (' Trans. Amer. Inst. Mining Engi- 

 neers,' Vol. XIX., p. 518): 



" The Bessemer invention takes its rank 

 with the great events which have changed 

 the face of society since the Middle Ages. 

 The invention of printing, the construction 

 of the magnetic compass, the discoverj^ of 

 America and the introduction of the steam 

 engine are the only capital events in modern 

 history which belong to the same category 

 as the Bessemer process. They are all ex- 

 amples of the law of progress, which evolves 

 moral and social results from material de- 

 velopment. The face of society has been 

 transformed by these discoveries and inven- 

 tions. 



" Steel is now produced at a cost less than 

 that of common iron. This has led to an 

 enormous extension in its use and to a great 

 reduction in the cost of the machinery 

 which carries on the operations of society. 

 The effect has been most marked in three 

 particulars: First, the cost of constructing 

 railways has been so greatly lessened as to 

 permit of their extension into sparsely-in- 

 habited regions, and the consequent occu- 

 pation of distant territory otherwise beyond 

 the reach of settlement; second, the cost of 

 transportation has been reduced to so low 



