93 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. ^XIV, No. 604. 



imports from Great Britain, revived such 

 domestic industries as had formerly existed. 

 Upon the return of peace in 1783, the 

 influx of foreign goods threatened our 

 manufacturing industries with ruin. The 

 revolution had been successful, but had 

 failed of its ultimate purpose. The estab- 

 lishment of a national government was 

 essential to the maintenance of manufac- 

 tures, the division of the powers of gov- 

 ernment among thirteen sovereign states 

 made a uniform revenue system impossible. 

 The manufacturers, mechanics and trades- 

 people wanted a federal constitution and 

 their influence compelled its adoption by 

 Massachusetts. The event was celebrated 

 by processions all over the country and on 

 one of the banners in Philadelphia was in- 

 scribed the motto : 



May the union government protect tlie manu- 

 facturers of America. 



The first Congress justified this hope by 

 imposing duties which should protect man- 

 ufacturing enterprises, which may be con- 

 sidered as the result partly of the revenue 

 laws of 1789, partly of the embargo in 

 1807, and of the restrictive measures and 

 of the war of 1812 that followed. How 

 little the idea that we should ever become 

 a great manufacturing nation was held by 

 our people may be gathered from corre- 

 spondence between Benjamin Franklin and 

 John Adams in 1780, in which Franklin 

 said: 



America will not make manufactures enough 

 for her own consumption this thousand years. 



and Adams replied : , 



The principal interest of America for many 

 centuries to come will be landed and our chief 

 occupation agriculture. Manufactures and com- 

 merce will be but secondary objects and always 

 subservient to the other. 



The feeling of skepticism in regard to 

 the introduction of mechanical and other 

 improvements was not confined to this 

 country. 



Admiral Sir Charles Napier fiercely op- 

 posed the introduction of steam power into 

 the royal navy, and one day exclaimed in 

 the House of Commons, 



Mr. Speaker, when we enter her Majesty's naval 

 service and face the chances of war, we go pre- 

 pared to be hacked in pieces by cutlasses, to be 

 riddled with bullets, or to be blown to bits by 

 shots and shell; but Mr. Speaker, we do not go 

 prepared to be boiled alive. 



Yet in a few years Sir Charles Napier 

 found himself in command of the largest 

 steam navy that the world had ever seen. 



George Stephenson, the eminent engi- 

 neer, spoke of the probability of steamships 

 crossing the Atlantic. 'Good heavens! 

 what do you say ? ' exclaimed Lord Stanley, 

 rising from his seat. 'If steamships cross 

 the Atlantic I will eat the boiler of the 

 first boat.' 



In more recent years a lord chancellor, 

 even after he had seen a theater illuminated 

 without candle or oil, poured ridicule on a 

 scheme for 'supplying every house in Lon- 

 don with gas in the same manner as they 

 are now supplied with water by the New 

 River Co.' Again, so eminent a chemist 

 and gas specialist as Sir Humphry Davy 

 himself is alleged to have said on one occa- 

 sion that it was as reasonable to talk of 

 ventilating London with windmills as of 

 lighting it with gas. 



The Academy of Sciences in France when 

 consulted by Napoleon at the beginning of 

 the century as to the steamboat spoke of it 

 as a ' mad idea, a gross error, an absurdity. ' 

 When Fulton's first steamboat made the 

 trip from New York to Albany in 1807, it 

 happened to be the seventeenth of August, 

 which caused many preachers to curse the 

 machine, on the ground that seventeen was 

 the total of the horns and the seven heads 

 of the beast of the Apocalypse. 



It was not until after 1830 that our 

 manufactures developed, for it was not 

 until 1835 that the construction of our 



