Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/67

Rh —so far as the amount of material wealth created during so short a term is concerned. Nevertheless, if this be so, it must not be forgotten that there have never been in the history of the world such gigantic forces at work, nor so rich and varied a field for their operation. If, instead of standing awe-stricken at the vastness of the results, we contemplate the magnitude and proportion of the original factors, we shall cease to marvel. Remembering the immense area of the country, the fertility of its soil, the number and riches of its mines, the number and navigability of its rivers, the availability and inexhaustibility of its fuel; remembering the amount of available labor, both human and mechanical—the latter representing hundreds of millions of human arms, and the former increased by supplies drawn from the Old World to the extent, also, of millions; remembering the number and utility of mechanical inventions designed to assist in the production of wealth; and bearing in mind that during this period the country has been free from war, that she has had to keep neither navy nor standing army—when we contemplate all this, instead of losing our mental balance, we shall most probably feel a sense of disappointment that the results are not even greater. If it were possible to estimate the original factors in the production of wealth as they have here existed during the last twenty-five years and calculate the product that should naturally follow, we should more than likely find it greatly in excess of that now existing.

Who can estimate the influence of inventions alone? It is supposed that England to-day uses, in steam-power only, a force equal to an army of eight hundred millions of men in the production and transmission of commodities. These, bear in mind, are men of iron, who never flag so long as fuel is supplied, who never grow weary, who never strike, who work as readily twenty-four hours per day as ten, and whose cost of maintenance is infinitesimal in comparison to that of men of flesh and blood.

There was invented in the latter part of the eighteenth century a machine that has done more for producing wealth than all the acts for fostering trade and developing industries that were ever devised by man. Eli Whitney has done more for the prosperity of his country than all the tariff discussions before or since his time. The supremacy of England in trade and commerce throughout the world is due more to Watt and Arkwright, to Stevenson and Crompton, than to either Walpole, Pitt, or Peel. Mr. Edison is a greater force in the national prosperity than all the measures for the encouragement of trade passed by Congress during his life-time. The beneficial influence inventions have had on civilization is only comparable to the evil that war and pernicious legislation have achieved.