Triumphs of the Republic in Practical Science: State House and American

American inventiveness is largely occupied in the constant multiplication of labor-saving machines. Patents are being applied for and issued daily on mechanical constructions designed either to aid or supplant man-power. There is no field of industry, however unimportant, which has not been invaded by the inventor with a view to minimizing the human effort required therein to produce its quota of material. The sewing-machine, patented by Elias Howe in 1846, may stand as the best known illustration. Nearly a million are made every year. The shoe-making industry has been revolutionized by the American sewing-machine, and its exported product is playing havoc with the shoe trade of Europe. The first machine for sewing on soles was brought out in 1861. It sewed 900 soles in ten hours. A shoe factory in Lynn, Mass., made a pair of ladies' boots for the Paris Exposition of 1889 in just twenty-four minutes. For this feat the pair of shoes went through the usual routine of the shop. Forty-two machines and fifty-seven different operators contributed to the operation, which included the cutting up and stitching of twenty-six pieces of leather, and fourteen pieces of cloth, the sewing on of twenty-four buttons, the working of twenty-four button-holes, and the insertion of eighty tacks, twenty nails, and two steel shanks. Since that time still more perfect machinery has been introduced into the industry, and a pair of ladies' shoes may now be turned out in twenty minutes.

Equally marvellous is the history of cotton-spinning and weaving machinery, from the invention of the gin by Eli Whitney in 1793. The same is true of the wool-weaving industry. It is difficult to name a single mechanical trade that has not been literally revolutionized by American skill and genius during the nineteenth century. The industrial history of the period is one long tribute to the ceaseless painstaking efforts of American scientific thinkers and practical workers to lessen the burden of labor and improve its output. From tallow to oil, and from gas to electricity, the progress of artificial illumination has been slow but steady. It is amusing now to look back at the opposition to gas-light. Philadelphia fought for more than twenty years against its introduction as a means for lighting the city. Peale, in his museum in the State House, had as early as 1816 or 1817 produced a fine illumination through the use of gas obtained from a private plant belonging to a man on Lombard Street, whose dwelling was probably the first in America to be lighted with gas. Peale was immediately enjoined from continuing his luminous exhibition, as it was declared to be a menance not only to the historic old State House, but to the entire city as well.

The United States Gazette declared it a folly and a nuisance, and insisted that common lamps would "take the shine off all the gas-lights that ever exhaled their intolerable stench." All manner of objections were brought against the obnoxious fluid. The newspapers dwelt emphatically on the dire warning that the introduction of gas would result in terrific carnage and destruction, and that the refuse of the works would kill the fish in adjacent streams. Even from the University of Pennsylvania came the voice of Professor Hare, protesting, that, even if gas were the good thing which its supporters declared it to be, tallow candles and common oil lamps were good enough for him. On March 23, 1833, a formal petition of remonstrance, signed by twelve hundred of the wealthiest citizens of Philadelphia, was carried to the State House. Gas triumphed, nevertheless.

Photography, the biograph, and the many wonderful branchings out from these processes, owe much to American skills, both of invention and perfecting.

From the gold days in California to the discovery of deposits in the Klondike region, American mining processes and machinery have commanded the world's markets. The machinery for collecting, refining, and carrying petroleum, and its product, natural gas, tells the same tale of progressive endeavor.

In agricultural machinery, American genius has won world-wide honors and rewards. In 1831, Cyrus McCormick, of Virginia, invented a successful grain-harvesting machine, containing the essential elements of every reaping-machine built from that day to this. It was first successfully operated on the farm of John Steele, near Steels's Tavern, Virginia. Two years later Obed Hussey built a machine which was much like the McCormick reaper, except that it had no reel and no divider and no platform on which the cut grain could accumulate. Both of these machines were shown in 1851 at the Great Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations in London. Under the auspices of the Royal Agricultural Society of England they were tested in the field, and the "Grand Council Medal" was awarded to the McCormick one, which was referred to by the judges as being worth to the people of England "the whole cost of the exposition." Subsequently the French Government decorated its inventor with the Legion of Honor for "having done more for the cause of agriculture than any living man."

American skill and courage have been conspicuously exhibited in the healing art and science. In the invention and operation of surgical instruments, in appliances for the relief of pain, and minimizing the inconvenience caused by the loss of limb or organ, our surgeons stand in the front rank among the benefactors of humanity. So do our physicians, whose contributions to medical science are the pride of the profession the world over.