electric-telegraphs, submarine electric cables, great engineering establishments, iron ship-building, and many other important enterprises. Three out of four of all the great ocean steamers, and three-fourths of all the locomotives of the world were constructed in this country.[[10]] By means of our enterprise and capital also, the first railways, telegraphs, gas works, cotton mills, modern water works, suspension bridges, water wheels, harbours, lighthouses, &c., &c., in nearly all parts of the world were constructed; and foreign nations have been inducted into the practical methods of working our great manufacturing and technical applications of science.
By means of English enterprise and skill the cities of Aix-la-Chapelle, Altona, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Berlin, Bordeaux, Brussels, Cologne, Frankfort-on-Maine, Ghent, Haarlem, Hanover, Lille, Rotterdam, Stolberg, Toulouse, Vienna, and others were lighted with gas. We formed Water Companies or Waterworks in Amsterdam, Berlin, and other cities, and drained Naples. We utilized the falls of the Rhone at Bellegarde, and thus obtained 10,000 horse-power for the use of the French manufacturers. We also sent the first steam-boat to Coblentz in 1817, and the first to America. We laid the first Atlantic cables. And as a general truth, we have been foremost in invention, application and enterprise.
Recent International Exhibitions however, and the migration of various branches of our trade to the Continent and America, have shown that the degree of our relative superiority in manufacturing skill is diminishing. Other nations, especially the German and American, perceiving the dependence of invention upon research, and the enormous pecuniary and other advantages gained by us, by the application of scientific knowledge to manufacturing and other purposes, have within the last few years aroused themselves, and are now pursuing pure science much more energetically than ourselves. A few years ago the relative number of original researches made per annum in England, France, and Germany were in the proportion 127, 245, and 777. Many of those made in Germany were valuable ones, and were made by Students in order to obtain a degree. Other nations are rapidly gaining upon us in the application of science to industrial purposes, and have even surpassed us in the extent of some of their manufacturing and technical operations. Many persons who have visited Europe and America at intervals during the last twenty years have testified to this.
The Vielle Montagne Zinc Company in Belgium employ 6,500 workmen, and produce annually 32,000 tons of zinc. The John Cockerill Company, engine-builders, Seraing, near Liege, employ nearly 8,000 men. Krupp, the great engineer at Essen, near Dusseldorf, employs about 10,000 workmen; his works at Essen alone cover 450 acres, and 1,000 tons
of coal are consumed in them daily. The Anzin Company (Valenciennes) "is the largest coal company in the world, producing no less than 1,200,000 tons per annum, and employs 8,000 hands." The Chatillon and Commentry Iron and Coal Company (France), produce annually from 300,000 to 350,000 tons of coal and coke, nearly 70,000 tons of iron and steel, and employ nearly 9,000 workmen. At the Creuzot Ironworks (France), "the mineral concessions cover an area of nearly six square miles, the coal-fields nearly twenty-five square miles, the building 296 acres. There are nearly forty-five miles of railway between various parts of the works, upon which are generally running sixteen locomotives. The galleries in the mines are more than twenty miles long." 10,000 persons are employed in the works and the annual amount of wages paid equals £400,000.[[11]]
Our practice with regard to original science has been very different from the plan carried out in Germany. Within the last few years great laboratories have been erected in Berlin, Leipzig, Aix la Chapelle, Bonn, Carlsruhe, Stuttgardt, and other places, at the expense of the State, and special provision has been made in them for original scientific research. A glance at the frequently published list of scientific investigations made in different countries will shew us that the Germans have been making a far greater number of discoveries in science than ourselves.
Sir R. B. C. Brodie, Professor of Chemistry at
Oxford, speaking of his experience when a student at Geissen, in Germany, states: "I say that the enthusiasm and earnestness of the young men in the laboratory was quite unparalleled in my experience at Oxford. The dilettante sort of way in which things go on there is very inferior indeed to the way the German students study. At Heidelberg, I have been told, there are about eighty professors, and amongst those professors are some of the most eminent men in Europe, so that they have a staff quite unsurpassed."
The industry of the Germans in scientific research is quite remarkable, they are availing themselves of the great fountain of knowledge to a much greater extent than ourselves, and are already beginning to reap the reward. Within the last few years they have succeeded, by means of researches, in making alizarine, the colouring principle of madder. "England produces immense quantities of benzene, the greatest part of which goes to Germany, there to be converted into aniline dyes, a considerable quantity of which goes back to England. No other country is so far advanced in the manufacture of the coal-tar colours as Germany. The quantity of alizarine manufactured by the German makers far surpasses the English production." (See "Alizarine, Natural and Artificial," by F. Versmann, New York, 1873). Statements of this kind are frequently published, and made by our manufacturers and others, of the departure of branch after branch of our manufactures to the Continent, and of continually increasing importation of foreign-made articles.