The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-07-07

| us. Our forefathers did not want the land, and yet they were afraid to refuse
 1t. Such was the condition of the Amer
 ican people during the occupancy of the White House by President Thomas Jef- ferson.
 But with their wonderful background of unlimited, unexplored land, abodt which the people knew but little and cared less Dr. Hale introduces us to two | men who were so to aid in the national
 a sword They were not wizards of the pen. like Washington Irving or like James Fenimore Cooper, who did for the Indian | wigwan what the romantic Sir Walter | Scott did for the Scottish moors. They were not silver tongued orators, like liar | rison Gray Otis or Pinckney or William | W.rt. They were simple mechanics and | inventors. They were humble men, but 1 they were social revolutionists. The | name of the one here was Robert Full 1 ton that of the other Eli Whitney. They | each presented a priceless gift. One gave 1 to America the steamboat the other the
 cotton gin. With those two gifts these | two geniuses revolutionized the map of 1 the new world.
 Before these two men came upon the scene the history of the American people | was mainly the history of many different | localities. Each locality, to a great ex- | tent, existed independently of every other | locality. The men for the most part | l their childrenh stockings, wove their l own garments and made their own rag l carpets. No man could make money off . the communities in other parts of the land because the cost of transportation
 W 5uld eat up all the profits. 'The reader 1 of today hardly remembers" writes Dr. | Hale, that there were times when the | market cost of a bushel of corn was | spent when 1t had to be carried forty
 miles. As late as 1880 I heard the jest which ridiculed an emigrant from Massa- chusetts by saying that he left his home year before to go west with a jug of
 molasses to use in trade and that he re- turned at the end of the year of ad- venture having made enough In bar gaining to pay him for the jug" When the mar of one state had to carry his goods to another state by wagon and horse, the cost of transportation obllt- erated all the profit, and thus communi- ties in the beginning of the last century lived almost entirely independent of each other.
 Fulton's Invention.
 But one day Robert Fulton lifted his magic wand. Then the "chu-chu-chu" of the steamboat was heard. Then the Mississippi and the Ohio and the Hudson and all the great rivers of our country became blackened with smoke. Then the emigrants of the east went west. Then the merchandise and the foodstuffs were carried from one part of the land to the other. Then Ell Whitney lifted his magic wand, and the southern planters carried their great bales of cotton down to the wharfs There they were loaded upon Rooert Futon's steamboats and carried to the New England factories. Thus, as if by magic, the industries of one part of our country clasped hands with those of other parts of our country, and our great forests were cut down and villages at,1 o,aI Cff Thttc the two mghtest nation builders of the beginning of the last century were not two statesmen, but two Inventors, who made it possible for the industries of our country to be developed and our lands to be covered with the busy hives of human | life.
 Thus I want you in this great national holiday to realize that the greatest men l of our nation are not the soldiers, though who dare speak one word against the men of the sword and of the gun who won us our national liberties and pro- tected us when we were In danger? They arc not the statesmen, although the pens of Livingston and of Adams and of Jay have drawn for us the map of this west ern republic. But they are the heroes of civil life. They are the farmers and the manufacturers. They are the builders of our great railway systems. and the edu- cators in our schools of technology, and the developers of the brain and the moral stamina They are the men, like Fulton and Whitney who teach us how to live and how to make the most of our life. AnI yet strange to say, while Robert tultoa and Eli Whitney In America, were revolutionizing the map of the new world, James Monroe, the American secretary of state sneerngly said to the French min ister: People in Europe suppose us to be merchants. occupied exclusively with pepper and ginger. They are much le- ceved, and I hope we shall prove 1t. The immense majority of our citizens do not belong to this class. and we are con trolled as much as you Europeans by principles of honor and dignity. I never knew what trade as, and the president l. s much a stranger to 1t as r. Do you wonder that Edward Everett Hale re- pudiated the slur upon the indirect re- suits of the life work of Fulton and Whitney? And, my friends, shall we who know how much honest labor has had to do with making this nation what 1t ls- are wo today to despise the calloused hand Of the laborer and the honest toiler in the nations industries?
 What Defeated Adams.
 Another impressive truth emphasized by our author which many of us profess to know, but which most of us need re- mlnuing of, is how little things inevita- bly, decide the policies of the men who control the destinies of the nation. As the falling of @ stone may change the co 4rse of a running brook, insignificant things may change the course of our lives and they do continually change them. Dr. Hale tells us that one of the great causes of John Quincy Adams de- feat for the presidency was the fact that he had introduced billiard table Into the White House. Many things less than billiard table have decided the careers
 O. the worlds greatest men.
 Study the life of Abraham Lincoln. How many little things decided that career! Take him, for instance, when he was a little boy of eleven years of age, falling into deep pool in the creek and nearly drowning and only saved by the presence of mind of a boyhood companion not as large himself. who extended stick to him and pulled him out when he was about to go down for the last time, or take that other most remarkable incident of Lincoln's life, when, after his defeat for reelection to Congress in 1S49, he turned his face homeward without dol lar in his pocket. His law practice was gone. His political position was gone. Everything seemed to be against him. At this critical moment President James K. Polk offered him the governorship of the territory of Oregon. Supposng he INDIAN sALvE WORKS WONDERS. Piles and Blood Poison speedily ana permanently cured by INDIAN SALyE. | the only remedy indorsed by the med, | ical fraterntty. We have mada th.