IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
29 
Over one million miles of telephonic wires have already 
been strung in our own country. Boston, a typical city,, 
measures its electric nerves at a total of one hundred and 
seventy million feet, and the radius of audible speech 
from it reached a year since, according to lies, to Duluth,. 
Omaha, Kansas City, Little Bock and Montgomery. 
Note the saving of time and energy thus accomplished. 
Without leaving his desk the manager of a business is in 
instant communication with all his employes, and with 
the business enterprises in his own and other cities. The 
captains of industry are thus able to command armies of 
a size unthought of a few decades since. So accurate and 
instant are the new motor and sensory nerves that the oil 
refineries, the copper mines, the steel mills, almost any 
industry that may be mentioned, can be regimented under 
one control, and an industrial revolution is accomplishing 
before our eyes. 
The electric wire, with the fast mail and the newspaper,, 
flash the news of the w 7 orld throughout all civilized coun- 
tries. When our army attacks Santiago or marches on 
Pekin, the public becomes impatient of even the interval 
between the morning and the afternoon paper. On the night 
of a national election the American public listens to the 
count of votes in every city and in every state. The new 
discovery of science, the new mechanical process, the new 
remedy for disease, are communicated without delay to 
the entire world. In commerce local prices seek the level 
of the world market, and the entire distributing system is. 
as effectively controlled as are the capillaries of the animal 
body by the clutches of the nerves. In a theatre vast 
as the whole earth we look down on the stage, upon which 
is played the never ending drama of current history. 
In a still larger sphere the new 7 organ of communication 
has a reflex on civilization. It makes possible self-gov- 
erning communities, stretching from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific. Bringing Washington face to face with London, 
Paris and Berlin, and the other capitals of Europe, it 
enables the great powers of two continents to arrange 
without delay a concert of action whose message flashes 
