St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1893-07-23
A sHRUNKEN PLANET.


those things which no man can know,
assure us this old world of ours was once
mere gaS-impalpable,i invisible gas-ill-
smelling, doubtless, as all gases
remaining from the original creative
stock yet are; and that, cooling, con-
densing. solidifylng, in the great blank
before time was, the planet with its
land and water and all that is on it took
form and shape and regular habits. The
same process of contraction by the es-
cape of gases still survives in some
what different form in the affairs of the
men who have come to own the planet,
but is known among them by the I'M
scientific phrase of squeezing out the
water" Sometimes the process is called
a panic or a crisis, but the result is the
same, the gaseous matter is condensed
into solids.
When Nature had reduced the volu-
minouS gas to solid earth, and had made
it fit for human and all other life, she
quit that portion of her work and took
up the greater and more unitarian
labor of making her globe good for
something. For ages men were content
to leave the globe as they found it, con-
tenting themselves with discovering it,
measuring it, and finding out what there
was in 1T and on 1t that they could APP.
propriate to their own use and better
nent. When we compare the present
with the historic past it is evident that
men have made good use OF their OPP
portunities. though with hardly equal
results.
Scholars sometimes get to know more
than their teachers, and boys always
get to be smarter than their fathers,
and every student of history and every
observer of current events know that
great many men believe that they know
great deal more about how things
should be run than does Nature herself,
of which prohibition and Sunday laws
and tariffs and such matters are apt
illustrations. But that is foreign to the
matter in hand.
The tlihe came, then, when men took
up the shrinking of tire planet where
Nature had quit, cOntented with her
work, and pronounced it good. Lack
ing. like old ARCHIMEDES, a place off
the earth to operate on, a place where
they could erect their congresses, they
struck out on novel line of operation,
which resulted in the paradox of max
ing the planet smaller without dimin-
lShing its circumference one inch. The
central idea of this new movement was
that the old fogy notion that distance
was to he measured by feet and miles
or leagues was incorrect and that the
true measure of distance was time.
This idea had its germ in the old Ger
man custom of time measurements of
distances. Ask peasant touay in Ger
many ''Wie welt ist mach DUSSELDORF"
and he will answer that "Es ist swell
stund welt"
The Atlantic ocean is not as wide,
since the triple expansion engine and
he twin screw drive the ship across it
in six days, as it was when the sails of
the clipper packet comprised the dis
lance i'll four weeks or more. San Fran
cisco is actually nearer New York, now
that you can ride there in five days by
rail, than when you had to go around the
Horn or by the isthmus by sail or plod
overland with the bull trains, using
months of time in the trip. The Boston
merchant, wishing gunnybags with
which to ship the produce of the West
ern farms, finds the distance to Calcutta
less now that he can telegraph his fact
or in the Indies to buy, and get word
back the same day that the bags are
bought and being loaded. than when it
took six months to do it by mail
and vessel. This world is great
deal smaller now that you can
| leave the snow and ice of the
North and in three days be among
the flowers and warm air of the South,
than when the same journey took weeks
| of slow and cOmfortlesS travel.
When the watermelons of Georgia
are eaten in Winnipeg. and the ba-
nanas of Honduras are peeled and eaten
on the breakfast tables of st. Johns:
when California sends to Maine her
pears and peaches and grapes, and the
oranges of Florida's orchards are eaten
| in Portland; when railroads carry us in
an hour distance that our grahdfathers
| could not cover in a day, and the tele-
| graph lets us hold converse instantly
with AustI alia-when we get all these
great facts fully and clearly in our sense
we realize how men have conquered
| pace with time, and to what small di-
mansions they have Shrunk this old
planet of ours.
|