or to that of nearly 150,000,000 men, or to a population of nearly 500,000,000. I suppose the actual population of the United States is nearly 00,000,000. We see by this how much in this country alone the inventions of Watt and Stephenson have increased the powers of man. The imagination staggers under the figures.
Of course a host of other inventors have been concerned with the results I have given, but the results are none the less the work of inventors because there are many of them.
The steam-engine has entered into many other inventions, the steam drill and the steam-dredge, for instance, which have given to man the ability to execute engineering works of the most extraordinary character.
The steam-hammer is another of the wonders of modern machinery which followed the steam-engine. One of the gods of ancient mythology was Vulcan, a blacksmith, who was supposed, I believe, to have forged the thunderbolts of Jupiter. What conception may have been entertained of his power or of the magnitude of thunderbolts, I can not say, but probably he was never supposed to wield a hammer like a modern steam-hammer, weighing thirty-five tons, through a distance of ten or twelve feet, or to have executed any work like the forging of the propeller-shaft of a modern steamship. But what ancient gods could not do the modern inventor easily does.
The power of the steam-engine comes from heat—from the fire in the boiler. The fuel used is largely coal, stored ages ago in the earth. Fire has been long known to man and has been ready to do his work, and the iron and steel for engines had been long known. But not till the magic of the inventor had brought these things together did man learn what power was lying ready to his hand.
If at the time Watt made his improvement in the steam-engine some change in the laws of Nature had come into play which had gradually increased the physical power of man until now it had become tenfold greater than it was, this increase would not be equal to that which man has gained from the labors of Watt and the inventors who have succeeded him in the development of that instrument, and in the invention and improvement of machines to be used in connection with it. And this increased power of man is not exerted for the rich alone, but is shared by the great mass of men as impartially as if the power of each individual had been increased, as I have supposed, in the same ratio. We see this most strikingly in the ability which the railroad and the telegraph have given to the laboring-men in the mechanical industries throughout the land to combine and organize for mutual support, and in opposition, as it is said, to capital. It is only through the agency of the railroad and the telegraph that a great body of laboring-men scattered over a wide area of territory are able to organize and act as a unit, and thus secure the highest prices for their labor which the nature of their work and the demands of society will permit. It is only by reason of the capital of others invested in these
