Another of the great books of all time appeared in 1859, when Charles Darwin (1809-1882) published the results of thirty years of careful biological research in his Origin of Species. This swept away the old theory of special and individual creation which had been cherished since early antiquity; and substituted in its place the reign of law in the field of biological life. This substitution of the principle of orderly evolution for the old theory of special creation marked another forward step in human thinking, [14] and gave an entirely new direction to the old study of natural history. [15] In the hands of such workers as Wallace (1823-1913), Asa Gray (1810-88), Huxley (1825-94), and Spencer (1820-1903) it now proved a fruitful field.
In 1856 the German Virchow (1821-1902) made his far-reaching contribution of cellular pathology to medical science; between 1859 and 1865 the French scientist Pasteur (1822-95) established the germ theory of fermentation, putrefaction, and disease; about the same time the English surgeon Lister (1827-1914) began to use antiseptics in surgery; and, in 1879, the bacillus of typhoid fever was found. Out of this work the modern sciences of pathology, aseptic surgery, bacteriology, and immunity were created, and the cause and mode of transmission of the great diseases [16] which once decimated armies and cities—plague, cholera, malaria, typhoid, typhus, yellow fever, dysentery—as well as the scourges of tuberculosis, diphtheria, and lockjaw, have been determined. The importance of these discoveries for the future welfare and happiness of mankind can scarcely be overestimated. Sanitary science arose as an application of these discoveries, and since about 1875 a sanitary and hygienic revolution has taken place.
[Illustration: FIG. 217 LOUIS PASTEUR (1822-95)]
The above represent but a few of the more important of the many great scientific advances of the nineteenth century. What the thinkers of the eighteenth century had sowed broadcast through a general interest in science, their successors in the nineteenth reaped as an abundant harvest. The three great master keys of science—the higher mathematics, the principle of the conservation of energy, and the principle of orderly evolution of life according to law—so long unknown to man, had at last been discovered, and, with these in their possession, men have since opened up many of the long-hidden secrets of cause and growth and form and function, both in the heavens and on the earth, and have revealed to a wondering world the prodigious and eternal forces of an orderly universe. The fruitfulness of the Baconian method (p. 390) in the hands of his successors has far surpassed his most sanguine expectations.
THE APPLICATIONS OF SCIENCE AND THE RESULT. All this work, as has been frequently pointed out (R. 338), had of necessity to precede the applications of science to the arts and to the advancement of the comforts and happiness of mankind. The new studies soon caught the attention of younger scholars; special schools for their study began to be established by the middle of the nineteenth century; [17] enthusiastic students of science began forcefully to challenge the centuries-long supremacy of classical studies; funds for scientific research began to be provided; the printing-press disseminated the new ideas; and thousands of applications of science to trade and industry and human welfare began to attract public attention and create a new demand for schools and for a new extension of learning. During the past century the applications of this new learning to matters that intimately touch the life of man have been so numerous and so far-reaching in their effects that they have produced a revolution in life conditions unlike anything the world ever experienced before. In all the days from the time of the Crusades to the end of the Napoleonic Wars the changes in living effected were less, both in scope and importance, than have taken place in the century since Napoleon was sent to Saint Helena.
THIS TRANSFORMATION WE CALL THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. This, as we pointed out earlier (p. 492), began in England in the late eighteenth century. France did not experience its beginnings until after the Napoleonic Wars, though after about 1820 the transformations there were rapid and far- reaching. In the United States it began about 1810-15, and between 1820 and 1860 the industrial methods of the people of the northeastern quarter of the United States were revolutionized. Between 1860 and 1900 they were revolutionized again. In the German States the transformation began about 1840, though it did not reach its great development until after the establishment of the Empire, in 1871. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, with the development of factories, the building of railroads, and the extension of steamship lines, even the most remote countries have been affected by the new forces. Nations long primitive and secluded have been modernized and industrialized; century-old trades and skills have been destroyed by machinery; the old home and village industries have been replaced by the factory system; cities for manufacturing and trade have everywhere experienced a rapid development; and even on the farm the agricultural methods of bygone days have been replaced by the discoveries of science and the products of invention. Almost nothing is done to-day as it was a century ago, and only in remote places do people live as they used to live. The nature and extent of the change which has been wrought, and some estimate as to its effect upon educational procedure, may perhaps be better comprehended if we first contrast living conditions before and after this industrial transformation.
[Illustration: FIG. 218. MAN POWER BEFORE THE DAYS OF STEAM Foot power a century ago. (From a cut by Anderson, America's first important engraver)]
LIVING CONDITIONS A CENTURY AGO. A century ago people everywhere lived comparatively simple lives. The steam engine, while beginning to be put to use (p. 493), had not as yet been extensively applied and made the willing and obedient slave of man. The lightning had not as yet been harnessed, and the now omnipresent electric motor was then still unknown. Only in England had manufacturing reached any large proportions, and even there the methods were somewhat primitive. Thousands of processes which we now perform simply and effectively by the use of steam or electric power, a century ago were done slowly and painfully by human labor. The chief sources of power were then man and horse power. The home was a center in which most of the arts and trades were practiced, and in the long winter evenings the old crafts and skills were turned to commercial account. What every family used and wore was largely made in the home, the village, or the neighborhood.
Travel was slow and expensive and something only the well-to-do could afford. To go fifty miles a day by stage-coach, or one hundred by sailing packet on the water, was extraordinarily rapid. "One could not travel faster by sea or by land," as Huxley remarked, "than at any previous time in the world's history, and King George could send a message from London to York no faster than King John might have done." The steam train was not developed until about 1825, and through railway lines not for a quarter- century longer. It took four days by coach from London to York (188 miles); six weeks by sailing vessel from Southampton to Boston; and six months from England to India. People moved about but little. A journey of fifty miles was an event—for many something not experienced in a lifetime. To travel to a foreign land made a man a marked individual. Benjamin Franklin tells us that he was frequently pointed out on the streets of Philadelphia, then the largest city in the United States, as a man who had been to Europe. George Ticknor has left us an interesting record (R. 339) of his difficulties, in finding anything in print in the libraries of the time, about 1815, or any one who could tell him about the work of the German universities, which he, as a result of reading Madame de Staël's book on Germany, was desirous of attending. [18]
Everywhere it was a time of hard work and simple living. Every youngster had to become useful at an early age. The work of life, in town or on the farm, required hard and continual labor from all. Farm machinery had not been perfected, and hand labor performed all the operations of ploughing and sowing, reaping and harvesting. With the introduction of the factory system, men, women, and children were used to operate machinery, children being apprenticed to the mills at about eight years of age and working ten to twelve hours a day. This soon worked the life out of human beings, and in consequence sickness, wretchedness, juvenile delinquency, ignorance, drunkenness, pauperism, and crime increased greatly as cities grew and the factory system drew thousands from the farms to the towns. When Queen Victoria came to the throne (1837) one person in twelve in England was a pauper, and the lot of the poor was wretched in the extreme. In cities they lived in cellars and basements and hovels. There was practically no sanitation or drainage. Streets and alleys were filthy. Graveyards were commonly located in the heart of a town. A pure water-supply through water-mains was unknown. Pumps and water-carriers supplied nearly all the needs. There was in consequence much sickness, and such diseases as typhoid and malaria ran rampant.