ENGINEERING skill has greatly improved, and by its daring achievements has added much to the progress of the world during the last forty years. This is seen in the construction of railroads of vast dimensions, four of which span our own continent, and stretch over vast prairies, deep chasms, and great rivers, penetrating through the Rocky Mountains, seemingly impassable as they rear their snow-capped peaks to the clouds. The Mont Cenis Tunnel connecting the railways of France and Italy, on the direct railway route from Paris to Turin, is a marvel of engineering skill. It is seven miles, four and three fourths furlongs in length. Fourteen years passed during its construction, and it cost about six millions and a half of dollars. It was begun in 1857 and completed in 1871. The Saint Gothard Tunnel which runs through a section of the Alps to Italy, six thousand feet below the top of these mountains, is another great achievement of engineering daring. The work consumed ten years’ time, the labor of over three thousand men daily, and cost over eleven millions of dollars. The Sutro tunnel, in our own Rocky Mountains, was another grand feat of mechanical progress during the last half of the century.
In 1830, the first steel pen was made and the first iron steamship was built. One year before this, the first lucifer match was made; and nine years afterwards, envelopes were first used. In 1826, the first horse-railroad was built, and kerosene oil was first used for lighting purposes. In 1846, Howe’s sewing-machine was given to the public, but it took eight years’ hard work to convince the public that the new invention was of any great value. Many other sewing-machines have since come into use, but all are modifications of Howe’s. They have revolutionized the whole “make up” of men’s and women’s wearing apparel, not to mention horse harness, upholstering, and all departments of life where fine stitching is called for. The delicate services of this wonderful machine have increased certain industries a thousandfold, though at first, like all other improved methods of work, it was supposed to be the destroyer of these industries, and to bring untold miseries upon all who lived by the needle. The manufacture of these machines, sales, and repairs have employed tens of thousands of people, and added millions to the wealth of a nation; to say nothing of the comfort and betterment of the life of the people.
Agriculture has made great strides during the last half century by reason of the increasing use of scientific methods. Rotation of crops and artificial manures have preserved the land from exhaustion and maintained it at a high power of production. Machinery also has added largely to the facilities for its cultivation. Ploughing, sowing, reaping, threshing, and other machines have made it possible for the farmer of comparatively limited means to produce immense quantities of food for man and beast, so that starvation in almost any part of the globe can be averted by the over-production in other parts. In 1855, at a great trial of threshing-, reaping-, and mowing-machines in France, the American machines gained a complete victory. In 1862, the United States Government established the Agricultural Department at Washington. Agricultural societies and colleges, in many of the States, have greatly advanced this most important department of the nation’s strength. It is as true now as when the wise Solomon spoke it, “The profit of the earth is for all: the king himself is served by the field.” A better knowledge of agricultural chemistry has contributed much to the more profitable uses of the soil. The sanitary conditions of living have greatly improved, especially among the poor, during the last half-century. Underground sewerage in cities, drainage of swampy grounds, removal of the cesspool which often poisoned the well which supplied the family for cooking and drinking, and the introduction of pure water in abundance, cleaner streets, and better homes for the working-classes, have lessened the death rate about one half. From McKenzie we learn that “In 1842, the average length of life among the gentry and professional men of London, was forty-four years: in the laboring-class it was twenty-two years. Filth and bad ventilation cost England more lives annually than she had lost by death in battle or by wounds during the bloodiest year of her history. The annual waste of adult life from causes which ought to be removed was estimated at from thirty to forty thousand.” Food is abundant and of great variety in our favored land, and the canning industry supplies the luscious fruits of summer at low prices throughout the entire year.
One noteworthy feature of the progress of the last fifty years is that it touches all classes; the workingman especially shares largely its advantages. The general and rapid diffusion of knowledge, by means of the greatly improved press, is one of the marvels of this most wonderful age. The “Hoe” octuple press can print 96,000 copies of a newspaper per hour, or 1600 every minute; the paper travels through the press at the rate of 32½ miles an hour; is printed, pasted, cut, folded, counted, and delivered in bundles of twenty-five, automatically. Three of these presses would be able to print 748,000 eight-page sheets, equal to forty-two tons per hour of printed matter.
Mr. Plant might stand on the roof of his office at Twenty-third Street in New York City, and say, “How changed is this city since I first saw it when a boy.” It had no horse-cars, no trolley-cars, no cable-cars, no elevated roads, no large hotels, no buildings of more than three stories in height, few stores more than twenty-five feet wide. It had no telegraph, telephone, phonograph, or electric lights,—only oil lamps,—no asphalt pavements. No steam-cars, no photograph galleries, no sewing-machines or type-writers, or bicycles, or horseless carriages, or public baths. No time-lock safes, stem-winding watches. No submarine cables, or Bessemer steel, or great suspension bridges. In 1820, the population of New York City was only 123,706; now it is over a million and a half. In the same time he has seen the population of the country grow from 9,628,131, (of whom 1,528,064 were slaves) to upwards of 70,000,000, and he has seen the inauguration of nineteen of the twenty-five Presidents of the United States. The territory of the United States has nearly doubled during his lifetime, and its accumulated wealth can hardly be measured during the same period. The development of our coal mines, iron mines, gold and silver mines, oil wells, natural gas stored up in the bowels of the earth—these, too, have made giant strides. The great railroad industries of the country, furnishing work for hundreds of thousands; the increase and enlargement of our manufactories, the great cities that have been built, some of them burned and rebuilt, as was the case with Boston, Portland, and Chicago; all these have added to the enormous wealth of the nation. In 1831, a dozen families around Fort Dearborn formed the nucleus of the present city of Chicago. Minneapolis this summer removed its first house, built in 1849, to a more convenient place, to be kept as an heirloom of that city of phenomenal growth. With the increase of wealth, large fortunes have been accumulated and have enabled their earners and owners to build the large railroads which have done so much for the development and progress of the country; to lay ocean cables, and work large mines, providing work and wages for millions of men.
The humane and philanthropic progress of this period is seen in the reforms instituted in prisons. Up to the present century punishment for crime seems to have been the leading idea of prison management. Instruction in the common-school elementary branches of education was introduced with encouraging results. Then libraries were established, and moral and religious instruction tended greatly to the reformation of the criminal. Wholesome rules and regulations were adopted. Various kinds of work, adapted to the prisoners’ intelligence and strength, were given. Rewards were apportioned for good behavior, which shortened the period of confinement. Better classification was made of the inmates, and generally just and kind treatment was instituted. All this had an uplifting influence on the crushed and degraded men, and turned many from being the enemies of society to be its friends, and to appreciate the efforts made for their recovery from lives of vice. Reformatories for youthful offenders caused their separation from old and hardened criminals, and caused many of them to become useful members of society. The first of these was “The House of Refuge” on Randal’s Island, in New York City.
The “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,” established by Henry Bergh in New York, proved to be the seed from which germinated hundreds of other similar societies throughout our country. Later, the “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children” has saved many an unprotected child from inhuman treatment, often received from its own parents. It is by far the best age of the world for children. Many millions of dollars are invested in the manufacture of toys and in preparation of books, papers, and magazines especially devoted to the interests of children. Life-saving stations along the coast of dangerous seas have rescued thousands of lives from a watery grave, and saved many millions worth of property. Travel by sea and land has become one of the greatest luxuries and means of education in this most enlightened century. The circumnavigation of the globe is no longer the daring feat of the skilled mariner. The human race is coming closer together, and is massing into cities. Clubs are being formed for the discussion of literary, scientific, æsthetic, historic, political, dramatic, musical, and social topics, and admit to their membership young and old of both sexes.
It is also an age of conventions,—scientific, political, and religious. Christianity is exerting a mighty influence in various forms. Throughout the world this is shown by the multitudes it has lifted out of barbarism in India, China, Japan, Australia, Africa, and made them law-abiding, peace-loving, and self-governing Christian peoples. Cannibalism and human sacrifice have now disappeared from the earth, with many other practices too horrible to name. For the care of the poor and unfortunate, New York City alone spends annually more than $6,000,000. It has homes for the aged, for orphans and for half-orphaned children, also for crippled, and the deformed. Poor women about to become mothers may go to a suitable institute where medical attendance and trained nursing are furnished free, or they may have both free in their own homes. The advance in the higher education, as well as great improvement in our common-school system, is a marked feature of our times. Most of our colleges have greatly raised the course of study, and several have become fully equipped universities, while other new universities have been added to the number; one in Chicago, two in Washington City, one in California, and one in Baltimore. Probably the most marked feature in the education of our time is the throwing open the doors of so many colleges and universities to women. These have flocked thither to take equal stand with the men, who have had a monopoly of these privileges since colleges and universities were founded: and they have entered the learned professions of medicine, law, and divinity, professions once thought to be forever barred against their sex. Co-education, the higher education of women, and their aspiration to lead a professional life, fifty years ago would have been considered the dream of fanatics only. Some even now doubt the wisdom of the movement, but, good or bad, it is here to stay, and will advance with ever increasing velocity.
There are homes for incurables where their hopeless condition receives such treatment as not unfrequently returns them to their homes restored to a measure of health. The blind, deaf, and dumb are kindly cared for, educated, and made useful members of society. That class once considered hopeless, women fallen from virtue, are sought out, cared for, and restored frequently to society, and often become rescuers of their own sex from like degredation. Discharged criminals are looked after and provided with temporary homes, and work is sought out for them. The children of the street are taken up, taught, and placed in homes in the West, away from the city temptations that were destroying them. For young men, and now for young women, coming from the country to our large cities, the Christian Associations find safe lodgings, work, schools, and churches, and throw around them every safeguard. The reading-room, gymnasium, lecture course, evening classes, and devotional meetings are all intellectual and moral forces in character building, and in preparation for the great work of life.
The higher education of medical science has made rapid progress during the last century, and especially during the last half of it. Health boards have done much in the way of sanitation to prevent disease and protect communities against epidemics and virulent plagues that have scourged the world for centuries. The use of anæsthetics has saved an incalculable amount of agony, and has greatly aided physicians in improved methods of surgery. Operations are now performed, with almost universal success, which would not have been thought of fifty years ago. Improved medical apparatus and instruments for examining the body have proved of great value in the treatment of bronchial and internal affections. The Roentgen Ray, which can bring to light the whole inside of a man, is the latest and greatest discovery of the period under consideration. The discovery of disease-producing germs or microbes is worthy of mention in this connection. Pasteur’s cure for hydrophobia has lessened the dread of one of the most terrible maladies that has afflicted the human family.