9 
projected the mighty plans for their pathway : First, by the bold projec- 
tor ; then, by the intelligent engineer ; next, by the wary yet far-seeing 
economist, whether saving his few thousand dollars to adventure in such 
enterprises, from fattening flocks, raising wheat and com, or sending 
u notions’’ in commerce to the antipodes, or healing the sick or defend- 
ing the oppressed. The government of these great establishments also, 
is almost as scientific, and quite as regular, as that of a locomotive itself, 
and requires no public principalities and powers to manage it, but is 
moved by a mechanism of individuals, simple and unostentatious as 
Puritanism. Thus a small board of directors, in some ten foot counting- 
room or obscure parlor, with one or two young men, with quills behind 
their ears and ledgers on their desks, constitute the whole paraphernalia 
of their management. These despatch to every quarter of the globe the 
orders which control every thing : it may be to import cotton from New 
Orleans, or wool from New Holland, or dyes from Turkey, or iron from 
Russia ; or to send bales of Stark sheetings to Liverpool, and Lowell dril- 
lings to Canton ; or to bring new scientific colors and scientific machines 
from the laboratories or workshops of Europe: still the same private 
electric spark giving motion to the whole, and through the mysteries of 
double entry keeping the results of the whole with the accuracy of ma- 
thematics and the rigorous analysis of the highest logic. 
Nor is it unusual here for a single master mind in commercial life to 
put into action machinery still more distant and difficult, and if not 
strictly scientific, yet calling to its aid all the fruits of science calculated 
to be useful — as was felt on our Northwest coast through Astor before 
the late war, and as is felt often since in the markets of the world — by 
voyages first figured out on the back of a letter or one’s thumb nail ; 
sending specie, if need be, to Bombay or China, collected by our mer- 
chant-kings from all quarters of the globe ; or cotton, or lead, or gin- 
seng ; or, when the great laws of trade require a different course, a draft 
of three lines, as much respected among the Hong traders, or in Amster- 
dam and London, as in Wall street in New York. Another striking 
case of the use of science here by private enterprize has been in the for- 
ests of Illlinois, Missouri, and Wisconsin, crowded with geologists and 
workmen in search of lead, and augmenting it so in a few years as to 
.supply not only our own immense wants, but those, in part, of Europe 
and Asia. A few humble diggers, guided by a zealot here and there 
in mineralogy, have nut in motion the capital of the merchant and the 
enterprize of the navigator, till the whole world witnesses their effects as 
