March 7, 1890.] 



SCIENCE. 



157 



©rations and administrations so profoundly affect the welfare of 

 mankind ; and yet this body is held together as an organization 

 of free men, each independent in his own sphere, governed only 

 by a body of science, which is the common property of all, and 

 the aggi'egated progress of research, invention, and exploitation. 

 The elBoient constitution and by-laws of this society are the 

 formulated principles of science. For the organization of the 

 labors of the past, the whip for the back has been the proper em- 

 blem of sovereignty. For the organization of the labor over 

 which you preside, the hammer for the rook is the emblem of 

 rule. You want in your deliberations no eagle on your mace, 

 no unicorn and lion ; but the balance and crucible properly sym- 

 bolize to the world the power of your knowledge to control the 

 industiies of mankind. 



Gentlemen, the industries which you control have their loca- 

 tion in the foundations of the world. The valleys thi-ough which 

 the living rivers roll, the prairies that spread their blossoms of 

 beauty to the sun, the hills that billow with ripples of pei-petual 

 joy, the mountains where kissing clouds are transformed into 

 cascades decked with rainbows, — all forms of land have their 

 foundations laid in interlocked, crystalline gems, firmly set in a 

 ■cement so delicately formed that the highest powers of the micro- 

 scope fail to reveal its sti-ucture. The vast diastrophic powers of 

 nature are forever engaged in mountain-building, against which 

 the clouds hurl their storms to carve the hills and form the 

 valleys; and, as the mountains appear above the level of the 

 sea, the clouds bear them away on river-floods to build the frin- 

 ging islands that are bathed by the tides. As these processes go 

 on from geologic age to geologic age, the gold and the silver, the 

 copper and the lead, the iron and the coal, and all the various 

 substances with which you deal, are gathered in lodes, and 

 segregated in bodies, and spread in strata, and are thus by nature 

 separated from the great crystalline foundations of the world, and 

 accumulated in masses. Then bounteous Nature repents of her 

 generosity. Seeing what a store of wealth she thus brings to- 

 gether, she conceals it from the eye of the vulgar, and deems 

 these treasures too precious to be intrusted to the ignorant. So 

 she hides them away in fissures and in caves, she buries them 

 under volcanic floods, she covers them with strata spread out by 

 the waves of the sea ; and she spreads over all a mantle of debris 

 — of bowlders and gi-avels, and sands and soils; and over all 

 she paints the bloom of the meadow, the variegated pattern of 

 the copse, and the green of the forest; and then she smilingly 

 exclaims, "My ti-easures are for those who can discover them. 

 They who are worthy, by their intelligence may find ; they who 

 are unworthy, by their ignorance must remain destitute. ' ' 



The people of the United States have chosen you — not by 

 blind natural selection, but by intelligent choice — as their rep- 

 resentatives; not to make laws, but to discover laws, — the laws 

 of nature, by which all these concealed treasures may be brought 

 to light, and fall into the possession of mankind. How well you 

 administer the trust the six hundred millions of annual mining 

 product in the United States attests. 



I thank you, gentlemen, for this evidence of your labor and 

 genius, and I congratulate your constituents for the choice they 

 have made. 



There is an organization with which I am connected, — the 

 Geological Survey, — established by the general government, and 

 endowed by the munificence of the people, that is working in co- 

 operation with many other organizations established by the sev- 

 eral States, the purpose of which is to aid you in your work. 

 This organization is endeavoring to map the entire area of the 

 United States for your purposes. It is endeavoring to trace the 

 various geologic formations, and to discover their relations of 

 sequence and interdependence. It is investigating the more rec- 

 ondite laws which conti'ol the distribution of values in the crust 

 of the eai-th. All these things it is doing to aid you in develop- 

 ing the mining industries of America. Let me assure you, as a 

 representative from this body, that we are informed with the 

 same pui-poses as yourselves, and that we also believe that re- 

 search is a boon to mankind, in part tlu'ough the inci'ease and 

 diffusion of knowledge, but in larger part thi-ough the increase 

 and diffusion of industrial blessings. 



The history of the mining engineering of America is replete 

 with the triumphs of science. In the Far West, where the soft 

 breezes of the Pacific make music on giant Sequoian harps, there 

 they harness rivers to monitors, and plough the mountains for 

 gold ; and the mining engineers, turning from these mighty 

 tasks, engage in the deft and delicate work of exti'acting the 

 grains of gold from the mountains of sand. Elsewhere they 

 penetrate through shafts into subteiTanean depths, and employ, 

 in gold and silver mining, machinery for power and eflSciency 

 elsewhere unparalleled. From the depths of the mountain they 

 pump rivers thousands of feet to the surface, and they shoot cars 

 of ore from the hell of darkness below, to the heaven of light 

 above, as if they were playing with toy-guns, such Titan boys 

 are they. Farther to the east, all over the land, the mining 

 engineers are opening the gieat coal-fields, and gathering the 

 sunshine which nature has been storing for unnumbered cen- 

 turies in the depths of the earth. In the lost years the vegetation . 

 of America raised its verdant arms to heaven, and, grasping the 

 glad sunliglit, fell prostrate on the gi'ound, and, still clinging to 

 its boon of light and heat and power, was buried in great coal- 

 formations beneath the accumulating sands of seas. This fossil 

 power and heat and light are brought once more to the open day, 

 and employed as powers for tlie machinery of America in warm- 

 ing the homes where wives and childi-en dwell, and in illuminat- 

 ing the towns and cities of the land. These mining engineers 

 have discovered that ofttimes the strata of the earth are domed 

 by geologic upheavals, and that they thus constitute gTeat 

 natural receivers for the gases distilled in the depths below. 

 Into these receivers they penetrate with their tubes; and, be- 

 hold! light, heat, and power are given to the world. Time 

 would fail to tell of all the triumphs of the mining engineers of 

 America. 



Gentlemen, I welcome you to Washington, and hope tliat your 

 deliberations may be wise, and that your joy in our midst may 

 be complete. 



ELECTRIC WELDING. 



In accordance with instructions from the City of London Con- 

 tract Corporation, Limited, Alexander B. W. Kennedy, F.R.S., 

 vice-president of the English Institute of Mechanical Engineers, 

 recently visited the United States in order to see what progress 

 has been made in the direction of the practical carrying-out of 

 the Thomson electric welding process. His report is dated Feb. 

 1. He visited the offices at Boston, and also spent about a week 

 at their works at Lynn, Mass. He also visited five different 

 works in the Eastern States (at Hartford, Ansonia, Brooklyn, and 

 Trenton) where Thomson electric welders have been in use for 

 some time (in some cases over a year) commercially. 



The welding of iron and steel wire was one of the first matters 

 successfully carried out by the company. He saw at the works 

 of Messrs. Eoebling, Sons, & Co., at Trenton, a welder which had 

 been at work there for about thirteen months, for a great part of 

 the time twenty hours per day, and the counter of which showed 

 that 193,890 welds had been made with it. He also examined 

 another wire welding machine at the Trenton Iron Works 

 (Messrs. Cooper, Hewitt, & Co.), which had done about nine 

 months' work, and had made 33,095 welds, and at the same 

 works a portable machine, recently installed, which had made 

 9,033 welds. This last machine was so arranged that it could be 

 carried about easily by two men, and connected with the mains 

 at any part of the immense shop in which it was placed, so as to 

 be used for mending or other welding, wherever required, with- 

 out the necessity of bringing a heavy coil of wire to it. The 

 managing partners of both the works spoke in the highest terms 

 of the efficiency of the machines, and as to the great saving 

 caused by their perfect utilization of short lengths and broken 

 wires. The welding of brass and copper wire, especially the 

 latter, naturally presented much greater difficulties than that of 

 iron wire, but those seem now to have been overcome. Mr. 

 Kennedy saw at the works of. Messrs. Wallace & Sons, in An- 

 sonia, a welder for this purpose, which was one of the first ma- 

 chines put down, and had made 30,415 welds (by register) during 

 the last thirteen months in copper and brass wire ; the latter, in 



