Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/498

484 sheet like that of paper, that he can cover such sheet with signs which can be made to express every passion or emotion of the human heart, every conception of the mind, and every fact in nature! Scarcely less wonderful than the fact that he can do it at all is the fact that he can make such a sheet of the size of the "Boston Herald" for two cents. It would take a volume to record all the inventions which have been made relating to the manufacture of paper alone to make such a result possible, and another for the inventions relating to printing. But the inventions relating to paper and printing would not of themselves enable "Boston Heralds" to be printed. The "Herald" is not made and sold for the paper and ink of which it consists, but primarily for the news it contains of what has taken place only the day before all over the world. You will find in the "Herald," as you know, or any other morning paper, day after day, the news of what took place the day before, not in Boston or vicinity alone, or even in Massachusetts or New England, or in this country, but in Europe, Asia, and Africa as well.

Through the potency of modern inventions you may perhaps tomorrow morning shudder over the horrors of a railway accident taking place at this moment thousands of miles away. Not till within a short time, and only through the works of the inventor, did a railway accident become possible.

You may perhaps read that a palace of the Emperor of Russia has been blown down with dynamite. Will you stop to think that dynamite is a new invention, or that the telegraph which brings the news was unknown fifty years ago?

The paper may tell you that Mr. Edison has perfected his electric light and is at this moment illuminating many cities, and you will speculate upon the effect that the announcement will have upon gas stocks, but will it occur to you that neither gas-stocks nor gas was known a hundred years ago, and that till within less than half that period man had but little more control of electricity than he has now of earthquakes?

Now, consider for a moment how this facility for transmitting intelligence must affect society in one of its most important aspects. A great calamity falls upon some distant city or community. If the news of it reached us, as it would have done a century ago, only after the lapse of days, or weeks, or months, and if friendly help can be given only after the lapse of a similar period, we may be touched with pity, but there will arise but little sense of sympathy or generosity or duty.

But when the intelligence reaches us almost at the moment of the occurrence of the event, and we are conscious that it lies in our power to help, the sympathies of thousands are awakened, their generous impulses are touched, and they recognize a moral obligation to bestow needed help, because it can be made immediately available. The duty