The Dupuyer acantha. [volume] (Dupuyer, Mont.) 1894-1904, 1900-05-03

Shortly before his death Benjamin
Franklin remarked that nothing
would give him greater pleasure than
a return to the world a hundred years
later, to see the changes which would
take place in the interval. But even
Franklin's trained powers of observa-
ton, his wide knowledge of the past
and his vivid Imagination could not
conceive of changes SO numerous and
striking as those which have come in
the century whose closing year began
January /. The steamboat, the loco
motive, the telegraph, the telephone,
the electric street car, the electric
light, the machinery for sewing, now
ing, blowing, printing, for tightening
all sorts of labor known a century ago,
and performing other kinds of work
which were unthought of then, are all
rendered commonplace to us through
familiarity, but to the contemporary
of Washington and Franklin, who
should be suddenly transported to the
world today, they would seem to be
marvels as stupendous as those which
greeted Lemuel CULVER on his arrival
in Brobdingnag. The political changes
would be almost as wonderful as the
social and Industrial, but the latter
would strike the average eighteenth
century parsonage first.
The railroads, the locomotives and
the immense trains of cars whirled
through forests, across the plains and
over mountains, with speed that would
seem to them to be lightning-like in
it's swiftness, would be more of a mar
vel to Washington, Franklin and the
others of the eighteenth century than
even the steamboats,. 1t took Wash
ington just six weeks to make the trip
of 600 miles, in 1853, from Williams
burg, then the capital of Virginia, to
Fort lie Boeuf, on French creek, a few
miles south of Lake Erie, to carry the
message of Dinwiddie, the royal gov
ernor of Virginia, to the French com
mander of that post, warning him that
he was on British territory, and telling
him to evacuate immediately-Wash
ington's embassy on this occasion
marking the beginning of the French
and Indian war, which expelled the
French from the American continent
and which gave Washington and the
other Americans the experience an(
the confidence that were turned tt
good account in the conflict a dozel
years a~fterward, by which Englant
, was driven out, and the United State
created. Washington's six weeks tril
of 1853 could now be made in less thai
"a hours. At the time that Franklin
made his last trip to Europe, thirty o.
t~hirty-five days was considered reason
ably fast time for the ocean passage
When Russia's Siberian railroad il
completed a year hence the entir'
globe can be circled in SO days.
Jackson's battle of New Orleans
over a dozen years less than a centur.
ago, was fought two weeks after tn
treaty of peace had been signed a
Client, but intelligence of the treat,
. did not reach the United States unit
more than a month after that fight
There was no telegraph at the time
either on land or under the ocean, an
news messages had to be carried acros
the water by the same slow convey
ances which transported passenger
!. and merchandise. 1t is now a little owe
1t forty years since the first Atlanti
cable was laid, but it is t~hirty-fou
years since the first cable was lai
which remained workable. Not man
years earlier than that time, however
: a telegraph on land was as much of
marvel as was one across the ocea
bed then.
These were the three great mechant
cal inventions of the first half of tn
century-the successful employmer
of steam on water by Fulton on tn
Hudson in 1907, when his Clermor
made the trip to Albany; averagin
about five miles an hour; the Liverpool
C Manchester railroad, begun in 1872
and formally opened for traffic in 1873
and the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, tn
first line designed expressly for trans
porting freight and passengers in tn
United States, begun in 1928, and tn
first in the world to project a road {
$50 miles or more; the first electri
telegraph in the United States, an
the first in the world employed fC
long distances, that between Bait
more and Washington OF the Mors
system, which was used to report til
proceedings of the two convention
held in Baltimore in the closing day
of May, 1914.
The telephone, the electric light, tt
p~honograph and the ROentgen RAYS al