The patron of husbandry. (Columbus, Miss.) 1875-1883, 1879-11-15
OUR AGE AND IT'S PROGRESS.

ADDRESS OF HON. D. WYATT AIKEN, BE-
FORE THE NINETY-s SIX LITERARY CLUB. |
Some Striking Satisfactorily the Country is |
Poor-Unequal Distribution of the Nations |
Currency-A Chapter National Banks.
Mr.. President, Ladies qnd Gentlemen.
An invitation to address literary club |
suggests, by implication, accomplishments
not possessed by your humble orator |
am no adept at word painting, and hence
cannot entertain you with tropes and fig
ures and flowers of rhetoric; but will en-
deavor to interest and instruct you by ad-
vancing few thoughts upon the peculiar
characteristics of the age in which we live.
| am told that this is your second ami
versary, but have not been advised of
the purposes of your organization; pre-
suming them to be, however, the mutual
improvement of its membership. If my
presumption is correct, let me ask each
member of the Ninety Six Literary Club"
to review the past two years and answer
me, has your connection with this club
improved you in any manner?
Ifyou reply that it has not, then | warn
you that you are not, by your connection
with this club, imbibing the spirit of the
present age, which, beyond all question,
is eminently characterized by its pro-
gress and improvement.
Every age, and almost every nation has
had some distinguishing feature. Away
back in the distant past, when the pYTa-
mds of Egypt were built, and when Gods
chosen myriads subsisted themselves
within the confines of Palestine, we had
the age of miracles. Homer and Virgil
by verse and Demosthenes and Cicero by
forensic eloquence, left their impress upon
Greece and Rome no less than did the
numberless conquests of their embattled
hosts The life of Peter the Hermit, and
the chivalry of the Crusaders are insepa
rably connected with the Middle Ages.
The history Of England would be incom-
plete were none of its pages devoted to
the lives of Henry the Eighth and his be-
headed wives. France would not be
France without Napoleon and all Europe
is o-day what it is because he lived when
he did. But, my friends. the age in which
we live, this, the latter half of the 10Th
| century, varies in its distinction from all
those which have preceded it. We, too,
| have our monumental piles, our poets and
our orators, our wars and our conquests,
our chivalry and our wife slayers, but our
peculiar distinction is our progress; we
are living in an age, practical, material
and unitarian, but eminently and emphat-
callv progressive.
PERFECTING INVENTIONS.
Other ages may claim, for instance, the
discovery of gunpowder, the invention of
| the printing press, and the utilization OF
steam, but it was left for our day to per
| feet these discoveries and inventions. An
terror to our late war, rifled cannon were
unknown, and a smooth bore was not eff
fective beyond thousand yards. To-day
rifed siege guns have point blanc range
of three miles, and will throw shells of sew
eral hundred pounds weighta distance of
fifteen miles.
The old printing press upon which Ben
Franklin labored assidiously that he might
turn off one hundred sheets of paper,
printed on one side only, in an hour, is
to-day an object of curiosity in the patent
office at Washington. In that same city
there is double cylinder Bullock press,
propelled by steam, that will print in an
hour both sides of 10000 copies of the
largest newspaper in America.
Fulton saw the boiling water throwing
the top of the kettle up and down, and ap,
piled the same power to propelling small
steamer three knots an hour through calm
:.
PEELED by engines OF an hundred horse
power, pillow the surface of the boisterous
sea at the rate of twenty knots an hour.
To our age, too, belongs the develop
ment of the telegraph, which, in its circuit
around the earth bearing messages from
, nation to nation, so completely outstrip'
the sun that it announces daily English
news to American readers many hour!
before the moment of their occurrence
beyond the Atlantic.
More wonderful still, the telephone
dispatches words and sounds upon tele
graphic wires, and the photograph bot
ties them for future use. Truly, we arr
, living in a progressive age.
! But in all the realm of science and art
, nowhere has progress been more apparen
than in that noble vocation in which w
are all vitality interested-the science, tn
, art, the comprehensive industry of Agri
culture Within the memory of many o
| us the great Father of Waters was the Oh
! viding line between civilized and savag
; life. To-day, thirds of the area O
this great Union lie west of the Misslssip
pi river, and the reclamation of that Vas
domain is due to
PROGRESSIVE AGRICULTURE.
When | was a school boy, the grea
: American desert was but sea of arid an
sterile land, today it lies within the State
1 of Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado, an
| comprises some of the most productive an
" remunerative farming lands in the Unite
States. Where the red man twenty year
ago chased the buffalo and the elk tor hi
morning meal, comfortable farm house
are dotted all over the magnificent pra
ries Cattle are there upon a thousan
hills, awaiting the butcher, who by tn
progress of the age is enabled to suppl
British and European consumers fres
roasts from our Western beeves.
What blessing should be heaped upo
those Northwestern farmers. Pouring in
to our Eastern ports from foreign land in
bling the American energy by associa
ton, they have emigrated westward g
from t,