Holland is a land that is said to draw twenty feet of water. Its
surface is below sea level. Since 1440 they have been recovering land
from the sea. They have acquired 230,000 acres in all. Fifty years
ago they diked off 45,000 acres of an arm of the sea, called Haarlem
Meer, that had an average depth of twelve and three quarters feet of
water, and proposed to pump it out so as to have that much more fertile
land. They wanted to raise 35,000,000 tons of water a month a distance
of ten feet, to get through in time. Who could work the handle?
The sun would evaporate two inches a year, but that was too slow. So
they used the old force of the sun, reservoired in former ages. Coal
is condensed sunshine, still keeping all the old light and power. By a
suitable engine they lifted 112 tons ten feet at every stroke, and in
1848, five years after they began to apply old sun force, 41,675 acres
were ready for sale and culture.
The water that accumulates now, from rain and infiltration, is lifted
out by the sun force as exhibited in wind on windmills. They
groaningly work while men sleep.
The Netherlandish engineers are now devising plans to pump out the
Zuyder Zee, an area of two thousand square miles. There is plenty of
power of every kind for anything, material, mental, spiritual. The
problem is the application of it. The thinker is king.
This is only one instance of numberless applications of old sun force.
In this country coal does more work than every man, woman, and child in
the whole land. It pumps out deep mines, hoists ore to the surface,
speeds a thousand trains, drives great ships, in face of waves and
winds, thousands of miles and faster than transcontinental trains. It
digs, spins, weaves, saws, planes, grinds, plows, reaps, and does
everything it is asked to do. It is a vast reservoir of force, for the
accumulation of which thousands of years were required.