Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

Modern science has produced a splendid mass of evidence as to the growing power and capacity of the human mind; of its independence, freedom, and ability to direct its own movements; of resisting the influences of external agents, of inquiring after original truths, and acting according to its own ideas of propriety, justice, or duty. As by the use of armed vision, and other mechanical aids, the modern scholar can extend his intellectual view to things, laws, and results beyond the most distant conceptions of uncultivated mind, so will like means bring into near neighborhood nations and continents heretofore the most remote.

The mechanical inventor stands prominent among the chief heroes and benefactors of every productive people, and especially is this true of the mightiest in our day, the English race. Their bloodless conflict with, and conquest over, the forces of nature, transcend in importance all the glitter of ancestral fame, and the proud spoils of foreign wars. Nothing in ancient annals is comparable to the prodigious feats of human industry and skill which have been witnessed since the age of Washington began. Not to go east of our own immediate ancestors, it is interesting to see how the old haunts of power are now but the abandoned monuments of progress, the means of which are mostly mechanics, all the chief seats of whose influence have migrated to the West. Canterbury, Lincoln, Salisbury, and Winchester, have remained almost stationary ever since the United States were organized; while Leeds, Paisley, and Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool have become the comprehensive centres of the most productive and beneficent life. The growth of the latter town has corresponded with our own great commercial metropolis; which, like it, is truly a city of the young and auspicious age. Sitting there upon a rock, overlooking the Atlantic, and enriched with the merchandise of many nations, the modern Tyre of the old world, whose rugged Lancastrian dignity comports well with the majesty of universal commerce, relies for her principal support on her rival New York.

Previous to the eighteenth century, great ingenuity and fertility of invention was manifested in theoretical representations of mechanical principles and complicated machines. But in all that relates to efficient construction and adaptation to practical use, a total absence of scientific insight was manifested. The puny engines might act very well in the form of models, if not set to work out something in good earnest, but otherwise they were sure to knock themselves to pieces in a very short time. On the contrary, this century is distinguished in nothing more than by the potent simplicity and prolific benefits to which all its great mechanical inventions are reduced. The hundred eyes of Argus, and the hundred hands of Briareus are at once laid under contribution to the widest good in the simultaneous action of all their most concentrated powers. Inventive genius, divinely guided, is fast altering the face of earth, and converting the elements of nature, together with her laws, into instruments and artificial powers, wherewith to augment the fruitfulness of human industry, and the products of cultivated soils. Labor-saving machinery increases the yield of agricultural science, facilitates transportation, and enriches commerce through the varied wealth it affords for exchange. The steam-engine, spinning-jenny, and power-loom, consume neither food nor clothing, while they accomplish more labor than millions of weary human hands. How wonderfully does mechanical science augment the products of industry, multiply the comforts and diminish the diseases of life, developing the resources, and increasing the capital, intelligence, and power of a nation!

With the exception of a few islands in hot climates, agriculture never did flourish in any country where the mechanic arts were not flourishing. Nearly all the grains, vegetables, and plants, as well as fruits, which afford support to our spreading population, and replenish the marts of trade, once grew spontaneously in eastern climes, whence they were transplanted to constitute the advantage and reward of western agriculture. As soon as the pioneer of a new region acquires sufficient knowledge of the mechanic arts, and learns to construct tools adapted to the cultivation of earth, he is able to convert its products into the means of comfort, and the staples of commerce. One discovery leads to another yet more prolific of good, and every improvement in mechanical science not only multiplies the enjoyments of rational man, but contributes to promote his health, increase his longevity, and augments the products of every realm of nature, in quantity, quality, and value. Agriculture is therefore dependent upon mechanical science, not only for its origin, but also for every step of its progress in the sublime march of invincible civilization. Agriculture has less direct influence upon the wealth and power of a nation than commerce, but it is most conservative of the highest national weal. Minds engaged in the latter pursuit are more active and acute, more inclined to seek after new discoveries and such inventions as most favor zealous enterprise; hence, nearly all great material improvements have been made by the mechanical, manufacturing, and commercial classes. Their minds are fuller of schemes and projects, often ill-digested; and they have more energy, but less stability of character, usually, than agriculturists. They are more daring, but less safe; their operations, unlike the salutary effects of bucolic toil, frequently partaking of the character of gambling speculations.

Most of our colonies were planted by commercial companies, and primarily depended on commercial gain for their chief support. But as our national resources and dangers have multiplied, very fortunately the conservative power of the rural populations has proportionately increased; so that at the present moment of peril, the mighty palladium of our Republic lies along the magnificent expanse of our western agriculture.

The propulsive energies and ennobling tendencies of this age and nation consist mainly in its mechanical, mining, and manufacturing industry, as the main feeders and conservators of its commerce. These lead to mental activity and independence, enterprise and inventions which contribute to the largest measure of productive results, and most ameliorate the various conditions of life. Had we long been limited to the narrow area of the original thirteen colonies, the preponderance of the commercial spirit would probably have ruined us; but happily the maritime coast around the little East, extended as it may appear, is vastly exceeded by the widening dominions of agriculture opened in the great West, whose inexhaustible richness guaranties the perpetuity of our union and the supplies of our food. Thither millions are escaping from the old world, painfully recollecting how many small homes they have seen demolished, to make way for the exclusive parks and aristocratic mansions wherein they could find neither sympathy nor support. But on the virgin soil where rugged emigrants build their cabins of content, the sense of property becomes the truest of magicians; it is to them the consciousness of power, and the feeling of value in self-relying effort. Arthur Young well said, "Give a man nine years' lease of a garden, and he will turn it into a desert; give a man entire possession of a rock and he will turn it into a garden." The vast basin of the Mississippi will soon become the paradise of republicanism, the chief fountain of ameliorating civilization, and the central granary of the world.

The first canal that was opened in the United States extended from Boston to the river Merrimac. The "Great Western" soon after was undertaken, and now the finest canals in the country connect the Hudson with the grand series of inland seas, and thence extend beyond the Ohio. The first railroad was also constructed at the eastern extremity of our republic, and was the beginning of a continuous thoroughfare of rock and iron which at this time extends due west a greater length, and with more abundant profit, than can elsewhere be found on earth. The first steamboat was built in this city, and made her trial trip between the focal-point of universal maritime navigation and the predestined line of the grandest inland travel direct from east to west. As canal, railroad, and steamboat were wanted, they were produced, exactly in the places and exigences best fitted to give them the widest and most salutary use. Neither Fulton nor Clinton dreamed of what gigantic results they were the incipient agents. Even Jefferson, who as unconsciously served the hidden purposes of Providence in the purchase of Louisiana, when told of the proposed artery of commerce which now winds like a thread of silver through this imperial Commonwealth, said that "it was a very fine project, and might be executed a hundred years hence." A hundred years hence! What will science have done for our nation before that period shall have transpired?

The advanced races are always the goers, while the less advanced are the stayers at home. Therefore the improvement of locomotion is one of the first essentials in the progression of mankind, to clog which is not merely a crime against the individual, but against humanity itself. Man, aided by the facilities which mechanical engineering has provided, is armed with the powers of nature; he has vanquished his opponent, and enlisted her forces in his service. Matter is no longer an impediment to oppose him, but the arsenal from which he draws his mightiest weapons and richest stores. Coal and water become concentrated forces, whose powers he may develop and control for the extension and improvement of his terrestrial dominion. One single steam-engine constructed by mechanical science, is of more real importance than all the powers of Rome, and a single printing-press than all the arts of Greece. They are more than mere instruments, they are prodigious powers, placed at human disposal. They are products of reason; and just as that highest mental attribute learns to see further and further into the processes of nature, so does man by such means acquire new power for extracting welfare from the earth. When Humboldt would enumerate only a few of the instruments whose invention characterizes this great epoch in the history of civilization, he names "the telescope, and its long-delayed connection with instruments of measurement; the compound microscope, which furnishes us with the means of tracing the conditions of the process of development of organs, which Aristotle gracefully designates as the formative activity of the source of being; the compass, and the different contrivances invented for measuring terrestrial magnetism; the use of the pendulum as a measure of time; the barometer; hygrometric and electrometric apparatuses; and the polariscope, in its application to the phenomena of colored polarization in the light of the stars, or in luminous regions of the atmosphere." Chemistry instructs us as to what and whence the metals are; and from the grossest dregs elicits flaming gas, that great moralizer of modern cities, more powerful than an armed police. Mechanics and chemistry furnish us with an endless variety of substances, in combinations infinitely diversified, all tending to give man more power, leisure, and comfort; to make him, in fact, freer, and more elevated in his position on the globe. Instead of being the slave of physical nature, science renders man its master, as the Creator intended him to be when he gave him an earthly dominion.

An immense amelioration has taken place in the condition of modern society. Man has extended the limits of his life, has intelligently constructed circumstances less fatal to his organism, and has vastly diminished his liability to dissolution; in fact, he has, to a certain extent, beaten the evils of the physiological world, exactly as he has vanquished the difficulties of the mechanical world. Better dwellings, clothing, and food; more abundant supplies of water and pure air, and prompt treatment under acute disease; inoculation and vaccination; the improvement of prisons and workhouses, and a more rational mode of treating the human frame both individual and collective, has secured to civilized man a longer tenancy and happier use of terrestrial existence. Thus, the sciences not only lead to an amended order of action, but also to a condition amended and improved as well. And we confidently believe that the very same kind of improvements that have followed the mathematical and physical sciences will supervene upon social science, and achieve in the world of progressive man far greater and more beneficent wonders than have yet been achieved in the world of subordinate matter.

Civilization was born on the banks of the great rivers of the East, and its grandeurs were first accumulated round the Mediterranean, under the sway of Greece and Rome. The mediæval age enabled European nations to develop their ultimate energies on the border of the Atlantic, and, with ships vastly superior to the triremes of antiquity, to take possession of the immense expanse of oceanic billows. Coincident with the establishment of great commercial exchanges in this new world, that masterly monument of mechanical science, the Eddystone lighthouse arose on the line of all progress, and guided the old powers and inert capital of Europe to improved enlargement and use in America. The great currents of the sea and trade-winds of heaven move westward alike and evermore. Science daily adds new capacities and momentum in aid of transportation. Young as we are as a nation, our boats, yachts, clippers, and steamships are the first in the world. The child of the East has become a man in the West, where oriental toys have expanded into colossal instruments proportioned to the occasions and efficiency of their requisite use. But no inventor is taken captive by his inventions here, however potent they may be. Every improvement lessens the impress of local character, and prevents a separation of the nation into distinct peoples. Petty cliques and transient conflicts may sometimes occur; but deep in the popular heart the great social country engrosses the profoundest regard, and entirely preponderates over the geographical country.