Page:The Triumph of an Idea.djvu/14

2 In the foreground of this progress has evolved the Ford idea, at first an enthusiast's dream in a scoffing world, slowly proving its soundness by years of painstaking research, growing into a vast manufacturing structure, and finally typifying the motor age as a corner stone of our modern industrial system.

Looking backward to the year 1885, one finds it difficult to realize the changes that have come about in the half century. Kings then ruled by "divine right" over a large portion of the earth. Queen Victoria was in her forty-eighth year on the British throne, Alexander III had been Russia's czar for half a decade, a Manchu emperor reigned in China, the Hapsburgs overlorded Austria, Wilhelm II had yet three years to fret before becoming the German Kaiser. In the United States the first term of President Grover Cleveland was just beginning. General U. S. Grant died in that summer. Franklin D. Roosevelt was three years old, Benito Mussolini a year younger. P. T. Barnum was running "the Greatest Show on Earth." The Nestor of the stage was Edwin Booth, and among the bright stars were Lester Wallack, Sir Henry Irving, Joseph Jefferson, Sarah Bernhardt, Helena Modjeska, William H. Crane, and John Drew, while the younger actors behind the footlights included Richard Mansfield, Ada Rehan, Eleonora Duse, Kate Claxton, and Lily Langtry.

Hadfield's invention of manganese steel and Parsons's steam turbine were the wonders of the past twelve-month. Only sixteen years earlier the last spike of the first transcontinental railway had been driven into a  Utah desert, and twenty-one years had gone since the