The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1920-03-11

NTxN7HIN 10Y, the same year In WnlCn the
HE@8&@9A Duke of Wellington and Napo-
H&xgH leon Bonaparte was born, James
HNA2yI Watt patented his steam engine,
which was destined to exert more influence
in shaping the worlds future than both of
these captains put together. The Napoleonic
wars changed the map of Europe. The
steam-engine gave to the world new civil
lization. An old man told me that his
grandfather, resident of New York city,
once asked the prayers of his church as he
was about to undertake the long and peri
lous journey to Rochester" An English
friend of the captain of our ship on his west
ward way around the world was overtaken
by business cablegram at Seattle. "I con-
cluded, said he, that l would just take a run
back to London and talk the matter over
with my partners"
Now this "run back to London" includ-
ing three thousand miles across the noun
tains, canyons, rivers, and plains of conti-
nent, plus three thousand miles more across
the ocean, involved less of time, less of dis
comfort, and less of actual danger than
"the long and perilous journey from New
York to Rochester" The one incident repre-
sented the beginning of the nineteenth CEN
tury, the other that of the twentieth.
The radical change in travel and trans
portation which took place during the past
hundred years fairly represents the profound
revolution in the machine industry and,
therefore, in every phase of civilization, the
greater part of which has occurred within
the memory of living men.
National religions, national ideals, and
national heroes, have all had far-reaching
influence in shaping civilization, but no one
of these can compare with industry in the
constancy and universally of its operation,
or in the magnitude of its effects. Bodily
wants are no more real than intellectual
and spiritual needs, but they are vastly more
conscious and clamorous, and among all peo-
pie and in all ages they have afforded the
chief stimulous to action.
A radical change, therefore, in the char
acter or methods of industry has always in
volved like change in civilization. Slowly
the mechanical arts developed, and their pro-
ducts, together with those of different eli
mates, created basis for trade. Not only
goods, but ideas were exchanged by cara
vans and ships. Cities were built, and a
commercial civilization appeared which was
as different from agriculture as agriculture
was different from normadic Again, new
method of gaining livlihood had created a
new civilization.
Down to the nineteenth century the
worlds work had been done by muscles, and
vital power was expensive. 1t required
years to produce hundred horsepower OF
man-power and it was costly to maintain
but when mechanical power was substituted
for vital, there came the profoundest change
in the history of material civilization. The
new power could be easily and quickly pro-
duced, and cheaply maintained. Its general
application has revolutionized agriculture
commerce and industry. Each of these three
elements enter into modern civilization, but
the mechanical arts have been so utterly
transformed and their products so astonish
ingly multiplied that the new civilization il
appropriately called industrial" and thi
profoundest change in the history of ths
world is known as the Industrial revolution
By this revolution the western worle
has been re-created. Until the advent O.
mechanical power the great bulk of th'
worlds wealth was in land. Under th'
feudal system landed property was almost a
unobtainable as it was immovable, except b.
inheritance. Those who held it were tn
privileged class who were born to position
and possession. Land could not be alienatet
. without the consent of the heirs. The com
mon laborer no more strove for wealth thai
for wings, which was about equally impos
sible. But with the advent of the industria
revolution an ever increasing proportion o
wealth became portable, very importan
fact. As long as most of the worlds wealtl
was immovable and inaccessible, trade AM
commerce were necessarily restricted within
narrow limits, capital for the development o