The Legend of Adam and the Stick with which he subdued the Animals. — The Stick is the Symbol of Power, and only the Hand can wield it. — The Hand imprisons Steam and Electricity, and keeps them at hard Labor. — The Destitution of England Two Hundred Years ago: a Pen Picture. — The Transformation wrought by the Hand: a Pen Picture. — It is due, not to Men who make Laws, but to Men who make Things. — The Scientist and the Inventor are the World’s Benefactors. — A Parallel between the Right Honorable William E. Gladstone and Sir Henry Bessemer. — Mr. Gladstone a Man of Ideas, Mr. Bessemer a Man of Deeds. — The Value of the latter’s Inventions. — Mr. Gladstone represents the Old Education, Mr. Bessemer the New.
It has been remarked that man is the wisest of animals because he has hands. It is equally true that he is the most powerful of animals because he has hands. It is with the hand that man has subdued all the animals. There is a legend to the effect that on the day when Adam revolted against his Maker, the animals, in their turn, revolted against him, and ceased to obey him. “Adam called on the Lord for help, and the Lord commanded him to take a branch from the nearest tree and make of it a weapon, and strike with it the first animal that should refuse to obey him. Adam took the branch, the leaves fell from it of their own accord, and he found himself furnished with a stick proportioned to his height. When the animals saw this weapon in the hands of the man they were seized with an instinctive fear mingled with wonder, and they did not dare to attack him. A lion alone, bolder than the rest, leaped upon him to devour him, but Adam, who stood upon his guard, swift as lightning whirled his stick and felled him to the earth with a single blow! At this sight the terror of the other animals was so great that they approached him trembling, and in token of their submission licked the stick that he held in his hand.”[25]
[25] “The Story of the Stick,” p. 2. Translated and Adapted from the French of Antony Réal [Fernand Michel]. New York: J. W. Bouton, 1875.
Throughout all the early ages the stick was both the symbol and the instrument of power; and it is only the hand that can grasp and wield the stick. The early kings reigned by virtue of the strong arm and the supple hand. They claimed to be descended from Hercules, and their emblem of power was a knotty stick. Nor does empire depend less upon the hand now than it did in the morning of time.
The hand no longer grasps the knotty stick; it no longer menaces mankind. But it wields the mechanical powers. It imprisons steam and electricity, and keeps them at hard labor. It makes ploughs, planters, harvesters, sewing-machines, locomotives, and steamships. It digs canals, opens mines, builds bridges, makes roads, erects mills and factories, constructs harbors and docks, reclaims waste lands, and covers the globe with tracks of steel over which the commerce of the world is borne.
Two hundred years ago England was destitute of most of these things. It had then no good dirt roads even, no good bridges, no canals, no public works worth mentioning, and scarcely any manufactories of importance. The post-bags were carried on horseback once a week. The highways were besieged by robbers. One-fifth of the community were paupers. Mechanics worked for from sixpence to a shilling a day. The chief food of the poor was rye, barley, or oats. The people were ignorant and brutal—masters beat their servants, and husbands beat their wives. Teachers used the lash as the principal means of imparting knowledge. The mob rejoiced in fights of all kinds, and shouted with glee when an eye was torn out or a finger chopped off in these savage encounters. Executions were favorite public amusements. The prisons were full, and proved to be fruitful nurseries of crime.
From little better than a wilderness, and almost a state of savagery, England has been transformed into a fruitful field, and its people raised in the scale of civilization. Its public works are the admiration of the world; its coffers are full of gold; its strong boxes are piled high with evidences of the indebtedness of other nations; its ships plough the billows of every sea, and bear the commerce of every land; and its manufactories, of vast extent, are monuments of inventive genius, industry, perseverance, and skill, more imposing far than the pyramids of Egypt or the temples of Greece and Rome.
To whom do the people of England and of the world owe this national progress, this progress in the useful arts on a scale so colossal as, by comparison, to dwarf the achievements of all the earlier epochs of history? Not to statesmen or legislators. They neither dig canals, open mines, build railways, lay ocean cables, nor erect factories. The pen in their hands may be mightier than the sword; but it is no match for the plough and the reaper, the electric battery and imprisoned steam. Legislators make laws but mechanics make things. On this subject, after an exhaustive investigation, Buckle says, “Seeing, therefore, that the efforts of government in favor of civilization are, when most successful, altogether negative, and seeing, too, that when these efforts are more than negative they become injurious, it clearly follows that all speculations must be erroneous which ascribe the progress of Europe to the wisdom of its rulers. This is an inference which rests not only on the arguments already adduced, but on facts which might be multiplied from every page of history.... We have seen that their laws in favor of industry have injured industry, that their laws in favor of religion have increased hypocrisy, and that their laws to secure truth have encouraged perjury.... But it is a mere matter of history that our legislators, even to the last moment, were so terrified by the idea of innovation that they refused every reform until the voice of the people rose high enough to awe them into submission, and forced them to grant what, without much pressure, they would by no means have conceded.”[26]
[26] “History of Civilization in England,” Vol. I., pp. 204, 205, 361. By Henry Thomas Buckle. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
It is, then, clearly not to the men who make laws that we are indebted for progress in civilization, but to the men who make things. The scientist who discovers a new principle in physics is a public benefactor. The inventor who devises a new machine helps forward the cause of progress. Whitney’s cotton-gin trebled the value of the cotton-fields of the South. The mechanic who constructs a machine that will make ten or a hundred things in the time before required to make one thing is in the front rank of the civilizers of the human race.[27]