Litchfield enquirer., 1878-09-19
Yankee Invention
The London Times discourses as follows on Yankee ingenuity:

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 The New Englander is an inventive animal. We are told that 'shis brain has a bias that way" He is always restless to fix up some thing in a more convenient fashon than it has ever been fixed up before No matter what his calling. his mind is working in kind of baelk-yard over some idea for economiZing labor that is on the eve of being realized. ssThe New Englander mechaniZes as an old Greek sculptured, as the Venetian painted, or the modern Italian sings; school has grown up whose dominant quality, cur1ously intense, widespread, and daring, is mechanical imagin- ation." Something of inventive energy may perhaps be discovered in these phrases akin to the faculty of discovery they glorify; but the pre-eminence of the mechanical genus ot the citizens of the states may be admitted, aud It is illustrated not for the first time, in the exhibition at Paris, Our contributor describes these wonders, and if, as may be hinted, they were equaled, and perhaps outdone, at Phil adclphia tive years since, the inventions that are exhibited in Paris are only inferior to the Philadelphia collection, and should be studied by the masses that did not cross the Atlantic in 1876. The Stow "f1exible shaft appears to be one of the most striking of the latest productions of Yankee ingenuity. This IS cOntrivance for carrying power rounda corner, out of window, up pair of stairs, or Wher- ever else it may be wanted. The operator holds in his hand some thing that he can turn about as easily as a small garden hose which it resembles; but wherever he applies it an auger at the end does it's work as perfectly as if it were the extremity of rigid drill. The shaft has been made flexible along it's length without losing it's driving rigidity, and this has been accomplished by winding a cable of steel wires, strand over strand, each successive strand in the reverse direction from the pro- ceding Passing by a crowd of minor ''no- tions," we come Hpon the exhibit of the Wal than watch company, which in economical importance is, perhaps, superior to anything else shown. The rivalry of the watchs of this company has already been felt by our own makers, and hesitaiing attempt was made last session, in the interest of the Coventry manufacturers, to prevent the watch cases of the companp receiving the English stamp which certifies that they are male of gold. It would seem that the Waltham watches may defy all attempts to exclude them in thIs in- direct way. Their first claim to public ap- prOval was derived from the extraordinary nicety of their construction. They were made with such perfect exactitude that the parts of all watches of the same class could pc inter- changed and. production being thus made possible on a large scale, cheapness as well as excellence was secured. Bnt the company have gone on introducing Improvements in their art. and the compensation dalance they have devised seems to have overcome the standing difficulty of the varying eApansibili- ty of the spring and the wheel. It is said that the delecacy of construction of the me- chanism invented by the company is such that micrometer they exhipit at Paris meas ures the 25, ,OOOth part of an inch, and might readily be divided under lens into 100, ,OOOth parts
 What is the secret of the inventive activity of our American cousins We are told that it runs in the blood, for the English descended population of New England has been much more fruitful of inventions than the descend ants of immigrants from other parts of Europe; but the statistical evidence on this point appears to us to be of dubious authority, If 1t was clearly established that those decended from English parentage are more inventive than those who have sprung from Dutch, Ger man, or French origins, we should have to re- fer the inventive ability of New England to something else than the operation of patent laws which are the same for all. It must, indeed, be observed in connection with this point that the principle of the English patent law does not differ ill any essential particular from that ef the law of the United States and the facilities offered to the inventor have, for some considerable time, been much the same on both sides of the Atlantic. There is, how ever, one clear reason why mechanical inven- ton should be more developed in the United States than here. It is to be found in the greater efficiency of labor there, and the in creased cost and difficulty of hiring it. A man is driven to invent machines for saving labor because he has such trouble in getting labor, and it is so expensive when he does get it. This stimulus comes as fresh and powerful goad when the use of many generations has been to rely upon help which is suddenly withdrawn. The American housewife; though oba sCi iao o rood rocitioy unff tho accIC- tance which is so easily procurable here, and yet it is something more than a conventional necessity that some of her household work should be taken off her hands. Her husband is worried by her household cares; he has to help her in the discharge of them; and he ap- plies his mind to the task of Tightening the labors that cannot be delivered over to others The call for labor saving machines is inces- sant, and the maker of them is always sure of his market. There is another circum- stance that tends greatly to multiply this spe- cies of manufacture. The machines in ques- tion are commonly made in the more settled part of the eastern states, where labor is com paratively less efficient, and they are employed most profitably in the less settled western states, where labor is most efficient. This remark applies more to the labor-saving ma chimes of agriculture and of manufactures than to those used in the household. Taking
 
 Illinois is, in fact, buying labor in the cheapest and selling it in the dearest market, and the economical advantages are enormous of thus carrying what may be called concrete labor in form that never grumbles about wages from the Atlantic to the Mississippi states. We may thus in some measure understand how invention comes to be in the air in the United States. The conditions of the Union as an economic society drive it's inhabitants towards invention and there, as elsewhere, necessity may be said to be it's mother. Yet we do not pretend to exhaust the whole secret of the phenomenon of inventive genius across the Atlantic. Who has ever discovered the pri- mal cause of the sudden development of na- ti0ns in diverse directions The New England CT invents as the Venetian painted; but what made the Venetian school arise in their strength to pass away again past recovery Can any one explain why, within the short space of fifty or sixty years, the Dutch school should spring into existence, attain unrivalled excellence, and disappear To pass to another sphere of art, how came it to pass that in an equal short space dramatic poetry rose ir England from the rudeness of Gorbodac to the wonder of Hamlet, and that now an English play is almost an impessibiity? Great con vulsive movements of nations, churning life out of the dead level of use and wont, seem tc be connected with these miraculous outbursts Of genius; but the secret links ot cause anC effect remain to be detected. The mechani cal development of the states belongs to a lower sphere than the splendors of Elizabethar literature or the gleries of art in the Venetian and Dutch republics, but it is possible that there underlies all the manifestations that ad- ded intensity of national existence which ac- companies and indicates a newborn sense of national freedom.
 Major Sam. V. Reid is very busy forward. ing schemes for Southern relief. The Major always was a sympathetic good hearted gen tleman and believer in the doctrine of fai division of comforts, as the few survivors O the gallant company he led in 1S61-62 can tes tify. One of the boys brought lamb int camp once upon a time fact which the Ma jor Chen Captain) was not long in discover ing.
 Garter" said he, Chow did you come int possession of that lamb ?"