24 
IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
raised to these discoverers, to Hoffman, Gfraebe and Lieb- 
ermann. In a more telling way industry acknowledges 
her debt to pure science when a great aniline factory such 
as that at Elberfield employs sixty professional chemists 
and turns the attention of twenty-six of them to pure 
research in discovery of new compounds. 
Science has thus given society command of energies of 
the highest efficiency. It has made the comforts of life 
common and cheap; it has lifted from the shoulders of 
labor its heaviest burdens and set free for higher social 
services all who are capable of their performance. It is 
the undiminishing fountain whence flows the world’s 
material wealth. 
The evolution of the circulatory system in the body 
physiologic suggests a similar development in the body 
social. The process which during the geologic ages slowly 
changed the primitive gasto-vascular cavity to the per- 
fected circulation of the higher animals to-day, which 
evolved from a simple pulsating tube the powerful four- 
chambered heart, may at least serve as a simile to the evo- 
lution of the distributory or transportative system of 
modern society. So obvious is the analogy that the 
arteries of commerce is a phrase of common parlance. 
But for our purpose it will not be necessary to carry the 
likeness into details, to discriminate, as some ingenious 
sociologists have done, the various organs, such as the 
capillaries, or to liken the red corpuscles of the blood to 
the 'golden discs of the circulating medium. Let it suffice 
to show that by the application of the discoveries of 
science society has obtained a system incomparably rapid 
and effective for the distribution of power, of food, and of 
all the products of labor. 
The world is enmeshed by lines of railway and steam- 
ship. They carry the products of our Iowa farms to west 
Europe, to South Africa and to China. To our dinner 
tables they bring in return linen from Ireland, porcelain 
from France, cutlery from Old England and silverware from 
New England, meats and fruits from states as distant as 
Texas, California and Florida, spices from the East Indias, 
