1

flail is a relic of an almost forgotten time. The steam plough, the mowing machine, the self-binder, hay tedder, and numerous other machines now do the work of the farm labourer. The modern threshing machine feeds itself, cuts its own bands, measures the grain, sacks it automatically, and stacks the straw with but little aid from the tender. Steel and steam have invaded every industry. So marvellous have been the mechanical inventions, so universal has been the introduction of machinery, so sweeping has been man's conquest over the forces of Nature, that not only have the methods of production been revolutionised, but the possibilities of increased output are practically unlimited.

Sec. 8.-The Revolution in Distribution. Along with the wonderful revolution in the methods of production have gone equally wonderful developments in the methods of distribution. A concentrated industry, like cotton spinning in Lancashire, would be impossible if it could not command a world market. With the extension of commerce and industry there came a demand for improved methods of transportation. Canals, stagecoaches, pack-horses, waggons, and sailing vessels could not do the work, and the slow methods precluded the transportation of perishable commodities. For a number of years attempts had been made to apply steam to locomotion. As early as 1769, a French army officer had built and operated a steam carriage, and fifteen years later one was constructed by Murdock, Watt's assistant. However, these locomotives were intended for use on the ordinary highways. In order to facilitate transportation upon the miserable roads, manufacturers had adopted the plan of laying down parallel lines of timber or flat stones for the wheels of waggons to run

over. Later, regular iron tracks were constructed and wheels especially fitted. In 1801, a charter was granted for a railway between Wandsworth and Croydon for the use of horses. The developments in the steam-engine made by Watt, and the use of iron rails to aid in overcoming the difficulties of dragging heavy loads over almost impassable roads, made the possibilities of steam locomotion plain to the inventors of the time. The honour of first applying steam to the hauling of loads upon a railway belongs, not, as is often supposed, to Stephenson, but to Richard Trevithick who, in 1804, built a locomotive, and set it to work on the Welsh Pen-y-darran road. In 1808, he built a railway in London, but this venture proved unfortunate for him, as his locomotive, after some weeks of successful operation, was accidentally thrown from the track, and the impoverished inventor was without funds to continue his experiments.

Sec. 9.-George Stephenson. Building upon the work of Watt, Trevithick, and other inventors, George Stephenson reaped the reward of practical success. He was born in 1781. His father, who was a fireman of a colliery engine near Newcastle, had no means to spend on the education of his son who at an early age showed a decided bent for mechanical construction. Young Stephenson began his life as a cowherd, and passing on through other grades of employment, finally became engine-man at the colliery. He was stimulated by a desire to know more about the steam-engine, with which Watt and Boulton were astonishing the world, and since he could not read, he began to attend nightschool at the age of eighteen. With the assistance of one of the principal owners of the colliery, he was

enabled to construct a "travelling engine" for the tramway between the colliery and the shipping port nine miles distant. His contrivance was set to work in 1814, and was quite successful. He then set about improving his invention, and in 1822 impressed the projectors of the Stockton and Darlington railway with his scheme of substituting the iron horse for one of flesh and blood. As a result, in 1825 was completed the first railway over which both passengers and goods were carried. Thus the modern railway system was inaugurated. A scholarly and not unfriendly critic of Stephenson's invention, writing at that time for the Quarterly Review, said: "What can be more palpably absurd and ridiculous than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice as fast as stage-coaches ? In spite of the sneers of the wise heads and their prophecies of failure, companies were organised and the age of rapid transportation opened.

Sec. 10. The Steamship. The problem of steam navigation had been by no means neglected. Near the close of the seventeenth century, Papin set forth a proposition to use his piston-engine to drive paddle wheels for the propulsion of vessels, and in 1707 steam was actually applied to propel a small model boat on the Fulda, in Cassel. During the eighteenth century, a number of inventors in England and America turned their attention to the development of the idea. In 1736, Jonathan Hull took out an English patent for the application of steam to ship propulsion. Henry and Fitch, in the United States, demonstrated the practicability of steam navigation, but Robert Fulton reaped the honours of the century of struggle on the part of other inventors. In the spring of 1807 the Clermont was

launched, and in the autumn the new "water monster made its successful trial trip to Albany. Trans-Atlantic steam navigation began in 1819 with the voyage of the American steamer Savannah from Savannah, Georgia,s to St. Petersburg via Great Britain and North European ports. The trip from Savannah to Liverpool was made in twenty-five days, without any serious difficulty. Now goods and passenger steamers ply between all the principal ports of the trading world. Such have been the results of conquering and utilising the powers of Nature, which through the centuries had only been waiting for man to wake to consciousness, and devote himself to science and invention. More than 400,000 miles of steel lines bind nations and continents together; the ends of the earth are but a few days' journey apart. Great ocean liners cross the Atlantic in less than six days. It is a pleasant trip of but ten days from Liverpool to San Francisco. Electricity has been harnessed to flash our messages over land and under sea, and to turn our nights into day. Through all these achievements we see the subtle and cunning brain of man unravelling the secret powers of Nature, and transforming them into servants of his will.

Sec. 11.--The Inner History of Invention. The preceding pages, which have dealt with the slow unfolding of mechanical inventions, take the halos from the heads of many heroes. They show us that not a single one of the great inventions was struck off at one blow from the brain of a genius. It explodes the "great man theory in the history of mechanical inventions. It cannot be denied that there have been a great number of inventors endowed with remarkable skill; but this skill has found play in studying the collective wisdom of the ages

bearing upon their work, and in profiting by the attempts, mistakes, failures, and successes of those who have wrestled with similar problems. Not one of the great inventions mentioned in the preceding pages can be attributed in its entirety to a single inventor. As Hodge pointed out in his evidence before a Commission in 1857 "The present spinning machinery which we use is supposed to be a compound of about eight hundred inventions. The present carding machinery is a compound of about sixty patents." If we turn to the inner history of mechanical invention, the secret of the great progress is easily learned. As has been shown, there were workers in every field of mechanics, each stimulating and aiding the others, and handing some new facts on to successors. Paul, Wyatt, Kay, Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, Cartwright, and others dealt with the textile problem; Papin, Savery, Newcomen, Beighton, Watt, and perhaps a host of others, whose names will never appear on the pages of history, added to the perfecting of the steam-engine. The same story applies to every great invention. Whatever may be our theories about the great man, we are forced to admit with Spencer that "he is powerless in the absence of the material and mental accumulations which his society inherits from the past, and that he is powerless in the absence of the co-existing population, character, intelligence, and social arrangements. Given a Shakespeare, and what dramas could he have written without the multitudinous traditions of civilised life-without the various experiences, which, descending to him from the past, gave wealth to his thought, and without the language which a hundred generations had developed and enriched by use?