Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 1.djvu/77

66 which could alone partly compensate for the relative feebleness of their means compared with the magni­tude of their task. Some instances of sluggishness, common to Europe and America, were hardly credi­ble. For more than ten years in England the steam­engines of Watt had been working, in common and successful use, causing a revolution in industry that threatened to drain the world for England's advan­tage; yet Europe during a generation left England undisturbed to enjoy the monopoly of steam. France and Germany were England's rivals in commerce and manufactures, and required steam for self-defence; while the United States were commercial allies of Eng­land, and needed steam neither for mines nor manu­factures, but their need was still extreme. Every American knew that if steam could be successfully applied to navigation, it must produce an immediate increase of wealth, besides an ultimate settlement of the most serious material and political difficulties of the Union. Had both the national and State Governments devoted millions of money to this ob­ject, and had the citizens wasted, if necessary, every dollar in their slowly filling pockets to attain it, they would have done no more than the occasion war­ranted, even had they failed; but failure was not to be feared, for they had with their own eyes seen the experiment tried, and they did not dispute its success. For America this question had been settled as early as 1789, when John Fitch—a mechanic, without edu­cation or wealth, but with the energy of genius—