Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/648

 6io Readings in Eitropean History a couple of pairs of shoes per day; the modern worker with machinery can turn out five hundred pairs a day. In one year six English workmen can produce enough bread to supply a thousand people for the same length of time. This includes all the labor from the breaking up of the soil to the delivery of the bread to the consumer. The extent to which mechanical power can be substi- tuted for hand labor depends upon the ability of man to contrive machinery. Here is the material key to man's spiritual progress. The plowing of a furrow, the sowing of the seed, the reaping of the grain, its transportation from one market to another, the weaving of a fabric, and the making of a coat, all represent in the final analysis the appli- cation of so much power to matter. The past achievements of inventors have shown us that there are no limits to the ways in which the exhaustless forces of nature can be applied to do man's work. If we look back, we see man struggling to maintain life by sheer strength of muscle ; but if we look forward along the centuries of the future, we see the strug- gle for existence taking only a small portion of man's energy, leaving all the remainder of his powers of heart and brain free for the enlargement and enriching of life. 498. Im- provements in methods of transpor- tation. (From Wells' Economic Changes.) The result of the construction and use of compound engines in economizing coal has been illustrated by Sir Lyon Playfair, by the statement that " a small cake of coal which would pass through a ring the size of a shilling, when burned in the compound engine of a modern steamboat, would drive a ton of food and its proportion of the ship two miles on its way from a foreign port." Another calculator, says the London Engineer, " has computed that half a sheet of note paper will develop sufficient power, when burned in connection with a triple expansion engine, to carry a ton a mile in an Atlantic steamer." How, under such circum- stances, the charge for sea freights on articles of compara- tively high value has been reduced, is shown by the fact that the ocean transport of fresh meat from New York to Liverpool does not exceed one cent per pound. . ..