Omaha daily bee., 1899-11-09
WHAT SCIENCE is DOING.
Destroying Renstiikc Toll and substi-
tuting Intelligent Labor.

II certainly seems at first sight to be an
economic danger, this educating Of the la
boring man and woman to be far too good
for laborer's work. says a writer in Nine
teenth Century. Let us cast our thoughts,
however, over a wider horizon, and see how
the decades that bring the peril are also
bringing the remedy. Science is steadily
sweeping away all those humblest classes OF
employment. Hardly any man has now to
toll UP ladders with the hod 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 plough
man Is fast receding as the steam plow
makes It's appearance. We rarely see long
lines OF men laden with coalbags running UP
planks as in the olden days. The need OF
men to do the work of horses is steadily di-
minishing 1t is true that science has by no
means conquered the whole domain. There
is still much scrubbing of floors to be done
by men and women on Bonded knees and
coal is still hewn out with pick and ak and
the use of muscle. with but little use OF
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 water
and sawyers whom our grandfathers used to
require? Imagine, If shirs had still to be
moved by galley-rowers, what millions would
be doomed to beastlike toll. Some parts
of the big domain of unrefective labor will
long bo left untouched but the process is
going forward, and 1t is clear that while
education is rendering the lower classes un-
fit for the humblest sorts OF occupations,
science is steadily sweeping away these oc-
cupations. 1t would be too much to hope
that these processes should be at all times
strictly proport ioned to one another. But in
the general drift of things they are compen-
satory, and II we only give to science
reasonable time 1t will leave us none of that
labor to be done which requires an unedu-
Gated laborer
Then comes the uneasy question as to
what Is to become of the classes thus de-
prived of occupation. The working classes
themselves often curse the progress Of in
vcntion and are tempted to look upon it as
no friend to their welfare. There are now,
1t is true. no longer any machine breaking
frenzies, but the difficulty often arises in an
acute, though silent suffering. Unfortu-
nately, society has always to travel to per-
manent good through transitory ills. When
an army Of compositors is dismissed because
some one has invented linotype machine
there Is excuse for some bitterness ot feel
ing. And yet there was time when whole
army OF manuscript book copiers had to give
way before the advent of the Compositor.
But the difficulty is always evanescent,
for here too, there are compensating in
fiuences at work. For If science is abolish
ing occupations at the lower end OF the
scale, she is creating new ones at the top.
Think Of the hundreds Of thousands of men
who in England are now employed in cali
ings that had no existence sixty years ago;
the telegraphers and photographers and
mechanics Of hundred kinds. In the last
decade or two what an army Of skilled men
has been demanded by the invention OF
the bicycle, the telephone and the electric |
light! AS compared with the beginning of |
the century, think of the long array Of ma |
rine and locomotive engineers, the chemists, |
the journalists the draughtsmen, the teach |
ers, the postmen, railway porters and tram
conductors. What a multitude of calings |
are there which are either new, or else |
newly stocked so that while the popula-
tion has quadrupled their ranks have been
multiplied hundredfold. But it is the en-
tirely new -yemployments that strike the
mind most forcibly and any one who runs
sis eye down census of the occupations of
the people will satisfy himself that in Eng
the adult male population find their livel-
hood in callings that had no existence when
the century began.
Thus while science takes away with one
hand it literally bestows with the other;
but what 1t takes away are the low-class
and what 1t gives are the high
class ones, demanding intelligence and cul-
tivating it. The general tendency Is, there
fore, humanizing.
But, of course, 1t never happens that the
coal HEAVIER, when thrown out of work by
the introduction of a steam crane, can go
away and get a place in one of the newly
created superior callings. He is not such
fool as to waste his time in applying for an
opening as an electrical engineer. But
there is a gradual creeping up that is al
ways taking place. And yet the transfer is
much less affected by the promotion of
individuals than by promotion Of genera
ions No doubt it sometimes happens that
the intelligent plumber steps into the new
opening for an electrical engineer and
leaves a gap which some one OF an inferior
calling steps into the gaps being filled in
succession until perhaps the riveter, thrown
,ut of work by the introduction OF hy-
iraulic machinery, finds vacancy at last
md steps into it. But it more frequently
,appons that the plumber educates his son
% De an oleclIlcdl eH6iHeei the Sai'ei |
apprentices his boy to the plumber and the
lock laborer sees his young folk aspiring to
De carriers
Thus the general drift Of the whole social
cale ia steadily upward in proportion as
science provides intelligent occupations at
he upper end and abolishes those that are
more or less brutelike as the lower, an1
O humanity as a whole Is the gamer. There
S, therefore, no reason to feel uneasy at a
prospect of oyereducaton.