The Breckenridge news. (Cloverport, Ky.) 1876-1955, 1899-10-25
What Science Is
Doing For The World.
Destroying Bcastiiso rol Bot substi-
tuting Intelligent Labor.


Iforiainly seems &C Grsi sightto be en-
economic danger, This educating Of the
'oborlng man and woman 20 be far 10
good Tor laboror'a work Let us cast our
thoughts, however, over q wider horizon,
end zee how the decades that bring the
peril are algo bringing the remedy. Sci
onCo ~ steadily sweeping away al those
humblost classes Of employment. Hard
ly any man has now 70 toll up ladders
with the bod Of bricks upon his shoulder.
The donkey engine does the purely
animal part Of the work. The reaper is
replaced by The machine, and the
ploughman is fast recosding as the
steam plough makes it's appearance.
We rarely see long lines Of men, laden
with coal bags, running up planks as in
the olden days. The need Of men TO do
the work Of houBes is steadily diminish
ing. Il Is true that science has by no
means conquered the whole domain.
There is still much scrubbing of
hools TO be done by men and women on
Bonded knees and coal iB still heWn out
with pick and axe and the use Of muscle,
with but little use Of the brain. And
yet, even in our fertile century, science
never works by revolution, but only by
progress. One domain after another
has gone, Where are now the armies Of
waierCarTiers, and ohair-porterB and
night men and sawyeB whom our grand
fathers used TO require? Imagine II
ships had still had to be moved by gal
Icy rOWerB, what millions would be
doomed TO a beastlike toll. Some parts
Of the big domain Of unreheCtiYe labor
will long be left untouched, but the pro-
cess is going forward: and it is clear that
while education is rendering the lower
classes unfit for the humblest sorts Of oC-
equations IL would be too much to
hope that these processes should be at
all times strictly proportioned to one an
othor. But in the general drift Of things
they are compensatory, and If We only
give to science a reasonable time it will
leave us none of that labor to be done
which requires an uneduCated laborer.
Then comes the uneasy question as TO
what Is 10 become of the classes thus de-
prived Of occupation. The working
classes themselves often curse the pro-
gFess Of invention, and are tempted to
look upon il as no friend to their welfare.
There are now, it is true. no longer
any Misunderstanding frenzies; but the
difficulty often arises in an acute though
silent, suffering. Unfortunately, society
has always to travel to permanent good
through transitory ills. When an army
Of oompositOrs is dismissed because
some one has invented a linotype ma
chine there is excuse for some bitterness
Of feeling. And yet there was time
when q whole army of manuscript book
Copiers had to give way before the ad.
vent of the CompositOr.
But the difficulty is always evanescent
for here, too, there are compromising in
huences at work. For If science is
abOlishing occupations at the lower end
Of the scale she is creating new ones al
the top. Think of the hundreds OF
thousands of men who in England are
now employed in callings that had no
existence sixty years ago, the telegraph
err, and photographers, and mechanists,
Of q hundred kinds In the last decade
ortWo what an army Of skilled men
have been demanded by the invention
Of the bicycle, the telephone, and the
electric light As compared with the be.
ginning Of the century. think of the long
array Of marine and locomotive engineers
the chemists, the journalists, the drau-
ghtsman, the teachers, the postmen, rail
way pOrteFs, and tram conductors. What
a multitude Of callings are there which
are either new or else newly stocked, 80