Septembke 19, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



451 



stuffs, for example, the more becomes appli- 

 cable to the manufacture of the comforts of 

 life.* 



The same simple principles apply to the 

 industries generally and individually, to 

 the advances observed in the economic 

 progress of the arts, to the development of 

 every science. The thermodynamist traces 

 the history of the heat-engines and finds 

 that he may plot a curve of their gain in 

 efficiency, in that of increasing steam-pres- 

 sures, expansion ratios, speeds of piston 

 and of rotation, 'duties' and even financial 

 returns. He predicts the approximate 

 values of these quantities for the engineer, 

 and the engine-designer and builder know 

 practically what to anticipate in the im- 

 mediate future and how to modify their 

 designs in the direction of further improve- 

 ment. The spinning of cotton and the 

 weaving of cloth, even, follow similar gener- 

 al laws and the eipert traces the curve of 

 their progress and knows that increasing 

 speeds of rotation of spindle, a more rapid 

 beat of the loom, simplification of mech- 

 anism, all tending to make the day's work 

 of the expert operator more productive, 

 will carry out the curve of progress with 

 further and constant tendency to elevation. 

 The superposition of the two curves insures 

 still more rapid rise, and the gain of the 

 Olympia Mill in the South over the most 

 ancient in operation in the North comes 

 thus largely of the fruition of a visible and 

 measurable and steady past progress. 



The resultant of all the curves of mod- 

 ern progress in superposition is seen in 

 those of the nation and, studying these, we 

 may assert that given, in the immediate 

 future as in the immediate past, that quiet 

 and peace essential to maximum efficiency 

 of industry, to the maintenance of produc- 

 tion on the part of the whole working pop- 



* ' The Trend of National Progress,' R. H. 

 Thurston, North American Revieic, September, 

 1895. 



ulation, through unintermitted labor with 

 highest skill, through maximum time con- 

 sistent with a wholesome and healthful life, 

 the trend of national progress will con- 

 tinue onward and upward with further ac- 

 celeration, even though already far ahead 

 of anything ever before seen in any part of 

 the wox'ld. Unimpeded by folly, demagog- 

 ism or international troubles, our total 

 wealth should at least double each genera- 

 tion; the earnings of the average worker 

 should nominally double each forty years or 

 less, and, measured in buying power, at a 

 much higher rate. The next generation, 

 all going smoothly, will see the average 

 skilled workman enjoying as much of com- 

 fort and luxury as the average member of 

 the college faculty to-day, and probably 

 more. 



The trend of production of the industrial 

 arts, and especially of those which contrib- 

 ute most to the comfort and pleasure and 

 moral and intellectual profit of the people, 

 will be found to exhibit the most impres- 

 sive advances, and already the wealth of the 

 country in this form is equal to the total 

 of all our houses and lands— and is increas- 

 ing at a 'double rate ; which, ' being inter- 

 preted,' means that, our necessities being 

 practically fully supplied, our people are 

 now accumulating the comforts of life and 

 all its good things by application to the pro- 

 duction of new wealth in these forms an 

 already large and a rapidly increasing 

 proportion of the productive energy and 

 ability of their ablest minds and most high- 

 ly skilled artisans. Ability, capital and 

 mechanical energy and brute forces are con- 

 spiring as never before to give the great 

 body of the people of the United States 

 and, in less degree, of other civilized na- 

 tions, a large and increasing proportion of 

 the growing product of these three factors 

 of progress. "We are fifty per cent, more 

 comfortable than were our people in 1880, 

 sixteen times as comfortable as were our 



