Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 56.djvu/342

328 full-rated capacity without injury, providing the strain is not maintained too long. A steam engine or any other type of motor that has ever been used for railway propulsion if loaded beyond its capacity will come to a standstill—that is, it will be stalled—but an electric motor can not be stalled with any strain that is likely to be placed upon it. If the load is increased the motor will run slower and the current will become greater, thus increasing the pull, but the armature will continue to rotate until the current becomes so great as to burn out the insulation. A railway motor calculated to work up to twenty-five-horse power will have to develop on an average about six-or seven-horse power, but if the car runs off the track on a steep grade, and has such a heavy load that the motor is called upon to develop one-hundred-horse power for a few seconds, the machine will be equal to the occasion. This result a steam, gas, or any other type of engine can not accomplish, and it is this fact as much as anything else that has given the electric motor the control of the street-railway field.



T is during the latter part of the present century that a general movement has arisen to give women their rights in business life and in political and social affairs. It is the intention of this article to treat of this movement, especially in its relation to education, in Germany, where, of all civilized lands, it has had apparently the smallest results. Progress in the direction indicated has been, however, far greater than appears on the surface, and the movement is slowly taking shape in a form that will gain official recognition and support, and the way is being prepared for scholarly attainments among the women of Germany, superior, possibly, to those of the women of other nations.

There is, moreover, an ideal side to this movement in Germany not altogether found in other lands. The motive for advanced study is more largely joy in the study itself, and desire to supply the spiritual needs of an idle life. In order to understand this ideal tendency it is necessary to cast a glance backward over nearly three hundred years.

Let us begin with the contest which was waged so successfully for the development and protection of the German language, first