The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1888-06-07
The Nineteenth Century.

The Nineteenth Century.
Eulogies of the present age and it's
achievements are by no means infrequent,
but the following summary from the
Albany Euening Journal is so tersely put
that we quote it:
Happy indeed has been the lot of man
who has livedlin the closing years of the
nineteenth century. he has witnessed
the grandest achievements in science, if
not in art and literature, that the world
has ever known. BE has seen al nation
of free people celebrate the first centen'
NAL of great republic. He has seen
the development and application Of cleo
tricity almost to magical uses. he has
seen an uplifting of mankind in every
sphere of life. Superstition has faded
away as science has advanced. Religion
has spread its white wings over the earth
and sea, and the spirit of militancy has
given away everywhere before the pacific
tendencies of modern society. What
would have been deemed impossible fifty
years ago is to-day commonplace and
almost a necessity. The telegraph and
telephone, the electric light, the various
applications of light and heat, are speci.
mems Of the development Of science to
the utilitarian and useful. It has been
we'll said that "our era MARKS one Of the
great epochs of humanity. 1t has been
fateful fifty years. If not pre-, eminent
in art, it has been in science; if not in
song, in philanthropy; if not in philoso-
ply, in physics. Ifit has produced no
Phidias, no Virgil no Raphael, no
Shakespeare, it has produced Stephen.
son, Daguerre, Morse, an Ericsson,
an Edison, in science; Cavour, a
Bismarck, in practical politics Lincoln,
a Gladstone and a Victor Hugo, among
political seers; Florence Nightingale,
Dorothy Dix, Clara Barton and a
Lucretia Mott. All these have been
representatives. men and women, not
separated from their fellows like mountain
peaks from plain and valley, but rather
raised on grateful shoulders because they
have been the servants of all" Men of
science who live to-day have almost
created a new world. To go back fifty
years is to go back to the slow processes
of thought and labor, that, in this rushing
time, seem incomparably tedious and slow.
The last half century has witnessed the
greatest of American inventions the
mower and reaper, the rotary printing
press, the sewing machine, the India
rubber industry, the horse shoe machine,
the sand blast for carving, the grain ele.
vator, the gauge lathe, the telephone, the
electric magnet. Strip the world Of
these to-day, and how greatly progress
would be retarded No nation that ever.
lived has been sc conservative of physi
cal forces, or done so much for mankind,
as the people of the United States
during the brief existence of the new
republic.
Nothing illustrates more forcibly the
benevolent spirit of the era than the
difference in the scale of wages paid to.
day and century ago. In 1900, common
laborers living in the rudest sheds, as
MacMaster, the historian, tells US, we're
paid from s5 to $6 month, working
from sunrise to sunset. In the city Of
Albany wages were forty cents day, and
men were glad to find employment. Yet
in those times clothing was much higher
than it is to-day, and days wages
bought only two yards of calico. One
hundred years ago a good farm hand
brought So a month and strong boy
was glad to get 81 a month to work at
the hardest manual employment on the
farm or in the shop. Butter was from
eight to ten cents pound, potatoes end
turnips sold for shilling q bushel.
Women went out to work for twenty-five
cents month and their board. A girl
who could earn twelve cents at the spin
ming wheel by days hard work thought
she was doing we'll. The poor suffered,
and there vas more want and wrstched.
ness proportionate to the population than
there is in the United States to day. To.
day the commonest laborer has his day
shortened to from eight to ten hours
with his regular half holiday, and is moi
satisfied with anything less than ten
| or twelve shillinps for his work.