Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/717

Rh thus undermined the theoretical foundations of socialism." Prof. Brentano has had exceptional facilities for the study of English trades-unions, having spent several years in the country, with free access to their records and archives; and he is master of the English language, and on familiar terms socially with English manufacturers and laborers. He also occupies (at Leipsic) one of the highest chairs of Political Economy in Europe. At the beginning of the present treatise he lays down, as the three principles which have in turn sought to govern the economic life of the ages, and struggled with each other for the mastery, those of authority, individualism, and socialism. Although each of these principles claims absolute correctness and exclusive control, no one of them has ever governed exclusively, nor has any one of them been entirely without effect. It is the task of science and of this book to investigate the relations, force, and operation of these principles in life. The conclusion of the whole is that the necessary key-note of our age, as of every epoch of grand progress, is individualism; but there are minors who need the protecting interference of the state, and for them the control of authority is still a necessity; but it must not be stretched beyond what is necessary. It must not be extended to those weak ones who, not isolated, but united, are able to guard their own interests. The fundamental principle of the economic order remains the free self-activity of individuals for themselves, and the free road necessary to the talented and the strong for the full development of their powers lies open to all. But the weak united arrive by it to independence, the minors acquire through it the necessary protection by means of legal barriers against abuses of economic superior power. "Wherefore this regulation of the labor relation contradicts the efforts of the feudal socialists who speak of the return of the old control of authority, in order by preventing the independence of the members of the lower classes the better to guard their own special interests. Wherefore, it contradicts further the demand of the social democrats to set aside all individual and social inequalities. But it corresponds with the ideals which have produced the great transformation of the entire social and political life since the end of the eighteenth century," and with the moral and political ideals of the age and with the fundamental principles of the law of to-day.

author's purpose in this book has been to describe briefly some of the principal engineering works carried on during the last fifty years, in a style as free as possible from technical phraseology and intelligible to the general reader, at the same time introducing details and comparisons that will be interesting to engineers as well. A superabundance rather than a deficiency of material has been met, for the chief engineering triumphs have been accomplished during the last half century, and the variety of adaptation has been almost endless. The author believes however, that an adequate variety of engineering works of great magnitude, difficulty, and importance have been described to justify the view that engineers, in directing the forces of Nature to the use and convenience of man, are among the greatest benefactors of mankind. American works are well represented, with descriptions of the New York elevated railways, railways across the Rocky Mountains and the Andes, the Detroit, Hudson, and Sarnia Tunnels, the St. Louis and Brooklyn Bridges, the operations at Hell Gate, the improvement works on the Mississippi, and the Panama and Nicaragua Canals, and many other American works are mentioned in illustration of principles. The list of works abroad described or referred to would be cumbrous to quote. In it all the classes we have mentioned are represented with the grandest achievements of foreign engineering. All together, however, are only a few remarkable instances chosen out of a great number of important works which engineers have carried on in almost every part of the world. It is impossible, the author adds, within a limited space, "to refer to various other branches of engineering science in which the skill of the engineer has conferred inestimable benefits on the human race. It has been shown how all the works facilitating locomotion on land, and affording access from the sea to ports, and by water-ways to the interior of a country, arc due to the labors of engineers, and how the