The anti-monopolist. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1874-1878, 1877-06-21
4 LOOK INTO THE FUTURE.

8reenDack against It's enemies,
4 LOOK INTO THE FUTURE.
Potter Palmer, the proprietor of
the'Palmer House cannot be surpassed
for enterprise. He has utilized the
roof OF his immense hotel in a most
unique manner. On iron frames, sup
ported by iron braces, is glass roof
which covers and protects q most
beautiful garden. Trees and plants
of all varieties are found here, and
the most remote portions of the earth
have been searched for stock for this
wonderful conservatory. Fern trees
from Australia, date and other species
OF the palm from North Holland, the
costly and beautiful Screw kpine, of
Whlch.several species are there exhib-
tied, rubber trees, dragon trees, the
yucca tree from Central America, and
hundreds of other specimens, costing
in the aggregate fortune of no mean
magnitude. Sitting in the cool, fresh
breeze. far above the din and roar of
the city, one can easily imagine him
self IN some tropical country, the pat
terlng Of a fountain sounding like
some broOklet away in the forest.
The time will come when all the
roofs OF our great cities will be thus
utilized; and the city will construct
great works to bring down the pure,
cool atmosphere from thousands of
feet above their heads. to replace the
hot and exhausted air of the streets
lanes and alleys.
If civilization and population in
crease for the next three hundred
years as they have for the past one
hundred, the pressing problem will be
how to subsist the greatest number of
people on the smallest space of ground.
Everything that does not serve the
purposes of man will be exterminated;
and man will cover the habitable
globe. Biologists tell us that there
was once an age of fish, and after
wards an age of reptiles. We are ap-
preaching San age of man." If the
progress OF the race is arrested by
some CONFUSION of nature. such as
another glacial or drift period, the
future explorer will stand amazed at
the innumerable memorials of the
race; even as we survey to-day with
wonder rocks hundreds of feet thick
made up together of sea-shells.
| There are few things that overawe
a thinking mind SO much as glance
at the coal-bearing regions of Penn
sylvania. You go down thousands of
feet deep into mine shaft, and there
you find a coal bed clearly the remains
of some ancient swamp; the stumps of
the trees are still standing in the
midst of it, and the fine tracery Of
fern leaves can be found upon the
rocks around it. AS you ascend the
shaft you pass, at distances of hun
. dreds Of feet apart, other coal beds,
each in turn overlaid by strata Of
rock of various kinds and colors, and
each one of which took ages to form,
and SO on to the surface of the earth.
The mind recoils from any computa-
, ton of the lapse of ages necessary to
cover that primal swamp with thou
|, sands of feet of rock, alternating
J with swamps.
, Out of all this toll and trouble, this
, vast history Of change and struggle,
, written in everlasting pages of stone,
man has come and it took him other
, ages to develope the little spark of in
telligence in his brain and thus mas
: ter eventually all the forces of nature.
, He has done it at last land now water,
: air, earth, fire, lightning, lall things,
: in short, are his servants. He owns
the planet. How much further the
great sweep of his intelligence will
range no man can to-day foresee.
Some Frenchman has prophecied that
within four hundred years man will
control the movements of the solar sys-
TEN. 1t sounds like piece of insan-
ity but what would have been said
one hundred years ago if it had been
foretOld that ere this date man would
7 talk across the ocean in an instant !;
3 that the traveller would pass across
the continent in five days; that the
t astronomer could tell in his closet the
3 lprecious substances that were being
+ consumed in the combustion of the
: next remote stars
: The age of man is at hand, and 1t
will be a marvellous age.