within the limits of a state might cost more than the value of the
goods. It cost, for instance, two dollars and a half a bushel to carry
salt three hundred miles in the state of New York. People who moved
from the eastern to the western part of the state could not afford to
carry their household goods. They had to be carried by boat from New
York to Albany, hauled to Schenectady, carried in boats up the Mohawk
River and on a small canal to Utica, then hauled overland to Rome, and
carried again in boats down a small canal and creek to Oneida Lake,
thence by water to Lake Ontario.
During the early part of the nineteenth century, in three ways travel
and hauling were made easier and cheaper. The simplest of these was by
the extensive use of canals. A canal is a trench filled with water deep
enough to carry well-laden boats. The boats are drawn by horses which
travel along a path called a “tow path.” In most cases the boats are
moved up and down inclines by means of what are called “locks” on the
canal. It is usually cheaper to haul goods by canals than by natural
streams as the locks make the water lift or lower loads on inclines.
The people of New York state became convinced that canals along and
connecting their water-ways would be a good and cheap way to carry
manufactured articles from New York city to the western settlements,
and to convey wheat, corn, and other produce to the eastern markets.
A canal was planned between Albany and Buffalo, to connect the Great
Lakes with the Atlantic. But the expense of this canal would be great
and many people did not believe that the traffic would repay it. The
matter was made a political issue and on it DeWitt Clinton was elected
governor.
It was largely through his zeal and energy that the project was
carried to a successful issue, and a canal forty feet wide and three
hundred and sixty-three miles long was dug. While the canal was being
constructed people called it “Clinton’s Folly,” and when it was
finished and successful they called it “Clinton’s Big Ditch.”
An effort was made to get the general government to help construct
this canal, but the bill was vetoed. Governor Clinton secured the
help of the business men of New York, and four months after the aid
bill was vetoed, the canal was begun, Clinton himself throwing the
first shovelful of dirt. In fact, there was dug not one canal, but two
canals,--one between Lake Erie and the Hudson, and the other between
the Hudson and Lake Champlain.
[Illustration: DE WITT CLINTON]
In the summer of 1825 the western part was opened and boats went from
Buffalo to New York City. As there was no telegraph to announce the
news of the starting of the first canal-boat, it was carried by cannon,
placed at intervals along the route. When the boat left Buffalo, the
first cannon was fired; the man at the second heard the report and
fired his piece; and so from one to another the news was borne to New
York in two hours. Governor Clinton was on the boat which made this
first trip; he carried a keg of water dipped from Lake Erie which he
poured into New York Bay, as a sign that the two were united. From the
first the canal was a paying investment as well as a great convenience
to the people. Freight rates decreased at once to much less than their
former rates. Instead of its costing the farmer of western New York
$1.10 to send a bushel of his wheat to the eastern market, it cost only
forty cents.
There was another important result. So much freight was carried down
the canal that vessels began to come to New York City in preference to
Philadelphia and other ports, as they were sure of cargoes of grain,
lumber, etc. This had much to do with the growth of New York City and
the prosperity of the state. This canal is still used. Every year there
travel down it great fleets of grain barges drawn by steam tugs. People
overlook other things in Clinton’s political record, and, on account of
this canal, remember him as the benefactor of his state.
About the time that the Erie Canal was completed, the first steam
railway was built in England. Its inventor was an Englishman who was
born while the American colonies were fighting for independence. George
Stephenson was the son of a poor workman, and as a boy he toiled in the
coal-mine where his father was employed. He made up his mind, however,
to get an education. When he was eighteen, he attended a night school
and learned to read and write. About this time his father’s health
failed and George had to support the family. Often he had to labor by
night as well as by day, but he managed to keep on with his studies.
Uncovered lights were then used by miners; carried into mines where
there was gas, these often occasioned explosions in which many
miners were wounded and killed. Stephenson set to work to invent a
safety-lamp. Meanwhile, Sir Humphrey Davy was working on a similar
invention. The two English scientists, independently of each other,
arrived at success about the same time.
Stephenson now turned his attention to the subject of steam locomotion.
He made a locomotive, a “traveling engine” as he called it, which in
1814 was successfully used in hauling coal-cars at a speed of four
miles an hour. Stephenson saw that this locomotive had many defects,
and he set to work to obtain better results. He succeeded the next year
in building an engine which had “few parts and simplicity of action.”
After many years of discussion, a plan for a railroad was approved by
parliament and a line was opened in 1825. People marveled at seeing
Stephenson’s engine travel at a speed of fifteen miles an hour; they
doubted whether the railway would ever become a practicable mode of
travel. Stephenson said, “I venture to tell you that I think you will
live to see the day when railways will supersede almost all other
methods of conveyance in this country--when mail coaches will go by
railway, and railroads will become the great highways for the king and
all his subjects. The time is coming when it will be cheaper for a
working man to travel on a railway than to walk on foot.”
After the success of the first railway, it was decided to build a line
to connect Liverpool and Manchester, as the canal between these two
cities was inadequate for the handling of their passengers and freight.
There was held a contest between different steam engines in which
Stephenson’s Rocket came out victor. A paper commenting on the success
of the Rocket, said: “The experiments at Liverpool have established
principles which will give a greater impulse to civilization than it
has ever received from any single cause since the press first opened
the gates of knowledge to the human species at large.” This proved
true. The problem of cheap and speedy land-travel was now solved.
During the years which followed England was covered with a network of
railroads.
America with its great distances to traverse, was not slow to adopt the
railroad. Only three years after Stephenson’s passenger railway was
opened, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was begun. The first cars were
only stage-coaches made to run on rails and the locomotive was a crude
affair,--but it was a vast improvement on former methods of travel.
Hundreds and thousands of miles of railroads were built in different
parts of the country. Now, great lines connect the north and south, the
east and west. Huge engines, very unlike Stephenson’s little Rocket,
travel a mile a minute: instead of taking weeks to go from the Atlantic
to the Pacific coast, people can make the journey in five days.
Before the steam railway was invented by an Englishman, an American
inventor had applied the use of steam to water-travel and had invented
a steamboat. James Watt, a Scotch inventor, had prepared the way by
his invention of the steam engine. After this was devised, many people
thought that it would be possible and useful to make it furnish motive
power for water-travel. Several American inventors attempted to make
boats moved by steam power and had more or less success; but they
lacked either money to carry out their plans or perseverance to
bring them to public notice.
While Watts was working on the steam engine, there was born in America
a boy who was to apply it successfully to water-travel. This was Robert
Fulton, who was born in Pennsylvania, in 1765. He was only a schoolboy
during the stirring days of the American Revolution. He was a bright
boy and early showed inventive talent. One holiday he went fishing with
some schoolmates, in a boat propelled by means of poles. To avoid the
labor of using these poles, Robert made some paddle-wheels which he
attached to the boat; he also fixed on the stern a paddle by means of
which the boat could be guided.
[Illustration: ROBERT FULTON]
But this was mere schoolboy sport. It did not occur to Fulton till
many years later to make boat-building his profession. Even as a
boy he determined that he would be an artist. He spent four years
in Philadelphia working and studying; there he succeeded so well
that he went abroad. In England he was welcomed by Benjamin West, a
popular American painter. Through his courtesy and kindness, his young
countryman met many interesting English people, men of affairs and
scientists as well as artists. In England Fulton became interested in
canals, which he thought would be useful to convey merchandise along
the water-ways of New York, as you know was done later. In fact, he
became so much interested in this subject that he gave more time to it
than to painting and he invented several improvements in canals and
canal-boats.
In 1797 Fulton went to France where he continued his art studies and
his scientific experiments. He invented a torpedo and diving boat,
but he did not succeed in getting either the French or the English
government to take it up. In Paris he met a wealthy American, Mr.
Robert Livingston, who was interested in science and who had tried to
make a steamboat. Fulton said that he was sure he could do so if only
he had money to carry on the necessary experiments. Mr. Livingston at
once offered to advance the funds and to share the future profits.
Fulton gladly accepted and began his experiments. He made a little
model of a steamboat with side-wheels turned by machinery. Then he made
a trial boat which broke before it was used. Undiscouraged, he at once
set to work on a second one. This was tried on the river Seine and to
Fulton’s great satisfaction it worked well. Then he had an engine built
in England and sent to America. Mr. Livingston secured the passage of
an act by the New York legislature giving to him and Fulton for twenty
years the sole right to use on the waters in New York state boats
propelled by “fire or steam.” People laughed and said that they were
welcome to the right for a hundred years. They called the steamboat on
which Fulton was working “Fulton’s Folly.”
In the summer of 1807, there was completed the Clermont, a side-paddle
steamboat one hundred and thirty feet in length. It was an ugly object;
even Livingston confessed, “It looks like a backwoods sawmill mounted
on a scow and set on fire.”
Fulton made ready for a trial trip from New York to Albany. The boat
moved off from shore, and then stopped. Fulton hurried to the engine,
and discovered and corrected the cause of the trouble. The boat moved
off again, and this time it kept on amid the cheers of the people.
The steamboat was no longer a question, it was an accomplished fact.
On that trial trip the boat went a hundred and fifty miles in thirty
hours, which seemed wonderful speed in those days. How different the
Clermont was from the swift and powerful boats of to-day, the “ocean
greyhounds,” as they are called.
In 1812 during the war with Great Britain, Fulton made a plan for a
steam war-ship and he was authorized to build it, the first in the
world. While attending to its construction he contracted a severe cold
and died in February, 1814.
We have considered improved methods of travel,--canals, railways, and
steamboats. Let us look at what invention has done for agriculture in
America. We may almost say that Whitney created the cotton supremacy
of to-day. Until he invented the gin, the seeds and lint had to be
separated by hand. It was a tedious and costly process. The gin does
the work so rapidly and well that it is possible to raise and sell
cotton much cheaper than other clothing materials. Thus it has become
the great agricultural staple of the South.
Whitney, the inventor of the gin, was not, as you might suppose, a
southerner. He was born in 1765 on a farm in Massachusetts; he never
even saw a cotton plant until about the time that he invented the gin.
From boyhood Eli Whitney showed an intelligent curiosity about
machinery and a mechanical turn. One Sunday he was left at home while
the other members of the family went to church. He took advantage of
the opportunity to investigate his father’s big silver watch; he took
the works apart, but with such care and skill that he was able to put
them together properly and his father never suspected what had been
done until Eli told him years afterwards.
Eli was a faithful student at the village school near his home; he
longed for a better education than could be obtained there and he
resolved to go to college. His father thought it would be better for
the young man, now nineteen, to continue work at trade or business,
but Eli was determined to have an education. For four years he worked
by day on the farm and in the shop to earn money for his expenses, and
studied at night to prepare himself for college. Then he went to Yale,
where he spent four years, eking out his scanty funds by doing odd jobs
and working during vacation.
In 1792 he was graduated from Yale. He wished to study law but his
funds were now exhausted and it was necessary for him to set to work.
So he went to Georgia to teach school. There were then no railroads
across the country, and Whitney went by sea, which was the cheapest and
most convenient way of making the journey. From New York there traveled
on the same boat Mrs. Greene, the widow of the famous General Nathanael
Greene. She and her children, who were on their way to their home in
Georgia, soon made friends with their fellow-traveler, the bright young
New Englander. When Whitney reached Savannah he was disappointed about
the school which he had come to teach.
Mrs. Greene at once invited him to visit her home where he could study
law until he found such a position as he wished. He proved a pleasant
visitor and a helpful one, too. He was always ready to put in bolts
and screws where they were needed and made many labor-saving little
devices. One day Mrs. Greene complained that her embroidery frame tore
the cloth on which she was working. Mr. Whitney at once made a new
frame, far superior to the old one.
Not long after this, some of Mrs. Greene’s guests were talking about
the unprosperous condition of the South. It could be remedied, they
thought, if a way could be devised to separate the short staple cotton
from the seed, which would make cotton a profitable crop. The seed
and lint of the sea island cotton do not adhere so closely, and these
were separated by means of a roller-gin, acting on the principle of
the clothes-wringer. But the sea island cotton can be grown only in a
certain section near the coast. The seeds and lint of the short staple,
or upland, cotton adhere so closely that they had to be separated by
hand. Mrs. Greene suggested that Mr. Whitney, who was so clever with
tools, should invent a machine to do this work. Whitney was willing
to try. He had never even seen cotton in the seed; he got some and
examined it and tried to devise a machine to do the work of the human
fingers.
His first plan was to have a cylinder on which were fastened circular
saws; as the cylinder revolved the saw-teeth would catch the cotton
and drag it from the seeds. On the plantation he could not get tin or
metal plates to make these saws; finally he decided that teeth of wire
would do as well or better. He made a model of a gin which worked well,
except for the fact that the cotton lint stuck to the saw-teeth and
clogged them.
“I must devise some way to get the cotton off the teeth,” he said.
“Use a brush,” suggested Mrs. Greene, picking up a brush and with it
removing the cotton from the wires. Mr. Whitney accepted the suggestion
and put rows of small brushes on a second cylinder to meet the teeth
and take off the cotton.
In 1793 Whitney went north to secure a patent for his machine. The
Secretary of State then was Jefferson who was interested in all
inventions and especially in those useful in agriculture. He asked many
questions about the workings of the gin which he foresaw would prove a
vast benefit to the cotton-growing states.
Cotton was raised and sold now at a profit, for one man could gin a
thousand pounds in the time it had taken to seed one pound by hand.
Macaulay said, “What Peter the Great did to make Russia dominant, Eli
Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin has more than equaled in its
relation to the power and progress of the United States.”
I wish I could tell you that Whitney won fortune by his invention which
was such a great benefit to his countrymen, but this was not the case.
Men infringed his patent rights and there was for a long time a foolish
prejudice among buyers against ginned cotton. Whitney spent thirteen
years struggling for justice and recognition, and his patent had almost
expired before his legal rights were established. Friends made an
effort to get the patent, which ran only fourteen years, extended, but
in vain.
Whitney was destined to be more successful in another undertaking. He
thought that the United States ought to make its own firearms, and he
succeeded in getting money advanced by the government to aid him in
starting a factory near New Haven. He invented new methods which proved
successful and profitable. His factory brought him fortune and his
prosperous latter years were spent in his Connecticut home.
Another American benefactor of the farmer first and so of the whole
country was Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of the reaper. He was born in
Virginia in 1809. In his boyhood, grain was cut with the sickle. It was
gathered into bundles by hand, tied, and put up in stacks. The grain
was separated from the straw and chaff by beating it with flails. This
was slow and tiresome work.
Many men before McCormick tried to invent machines to reap grain. Some
of the English machines were fairly successful. You would think that
the English farmers would welcome the invention. Instead, they said
that it would deprive laborers of work, and they threatened to kill the
makers if they continued to manufacture these machines.
In sparsely-populated America people were on the lookout for
labor-saving inventions; they welcomed the reaping machine which was
invented by McCormick in 1831. This useful invention won both money and
fame for Mr. McCormick; a part of his well-gained wealth was devoted to
the endowment of schools.
In 1851 at the World’s Fair in London there was a trial of different
reapers. Under unfavorable conditions, the McCormick machine did
perfect work; at a timed trial it proved that it could cut twenty acres
in a day. A farmer who was present broke his sickle across his knee,
saying that it would no longer be needed. Wonderful improvements have
been made in the reaper. There are great machines now on the prairie
lands of the west which cut the grain, thresh it, and carry it from the
fields in sacks ready for the mill.
Mowing-machines constructed on a plan similar to the reapers, cut
grass, and horse-rakes and hay-forks handle the hay so cheaply that
the production of hay now costs less than a fifth of what it did under
the old methods. Flails, too, have been replaced by modern threshing
machines.
The labor-saving machines used on a farm enable a few people to do
with ease the work which formerly required the labor of many. As
fewer men are required in the country, more are set free to engage in
business and trade. For these purposes, they gather in cities, which
have gained size and wealth that would have been impossible under old
agricultural conditions.
Let us now consider the improvements in methods of communication.
The carrying of letters and papers by the great postal system of our
government, is done chiefly on the steam cars and steamboats, which
have already been described. You know, however, that by means of the
telegraph and the telephone messages can be transmitted much more
promptly than by mail. Both these modes of communication are recent.
Before they were invented, various methods were used to transmit
intelligence quickly. You learned how, by the firing of cannon along
the canal, in two hours it was announced in New York that the first
boat was starting down the Erie Canal.
A thousand years ago, beacon-fires were lighted along the coasts of
England to warn people of the approach of an enemy; a hundred years
ago, similar signals were used in our own country. Sometimes a wood
fire was kindled, sometimes a pot of tar was set on fire. At the
beginning of the nineteenth century, the semaphore was used to some
extent. This consists of a horizontal bar, set on a high post. By
changes in its position, according to a method of signals agreed upon,
messages are sent. Flags are used for signals and messages are sent by
placing flags of different colors and shapes in different positions;
this is less practicable on land than at sea where the range of vision
is uninterrupted. Another method of signaling is by mirrors to reflect
the sunlight. But all these methods have inconveniences and are limited
to comparatively short distances.
Early in the nineteenth century, scientists thought that electricity
which can be conducted by wires from place to place might be utilized
to carry messages. This was at last successfully accomplished by an
American, Samuel Finley Breese Morse.
Morse was born in Massachusetts in 1791 and was given the names of his
father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather. As befitting a
child with the reputation of so many to sustain, his education began
early. At four he was sent to what was called a “dame school” conducted
by an old lady in the neighborhood. At seven he was sent away from home
to attend a preparatory school; later he went to an academy; and thence
at fifteen to Yale College.
At Yale he was much interested in some experiments with which a
professor illustrated a lecture on electricity. It seemed to young
Morse that this great force which travels with such wonderful speed
ought to be put to some use. During vacation he made many experiments
in the college laboratory.
But art, not science, was the subject which interested him most. From
his childhood, he had been fond of drawing; he developed such skill and
interest in the pictorial art that when he left college he told his
father he wished to become an artist. Dr. Morse had hoped that his son
would choose a profession but he resolved to let the youth follow his
own inclinations and talents. Young Morse studied art several years,
first in America and afterwards in England. His pictures brought him
praise and medals abroad, and at home he became a successful portrait
painter. He organized the National Academy of the Arts of Design and
was made its president. Then he went abroad again and spent three years
studying his chosen art.
In 1832 he started home; he was now forty-one years old and his
life-work up to this time had been art. At this time an incident turned
his attention to science, to the mysterious force which had interested
him in his college days. On shipboard coming home, there arose a
discussion about electricity and the almost instantaneous passage of a
current along a copper wire.
Morse said: “If the presence of electricity can be made visible in
any part of the circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be
transmitted by it.”
The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that
messages could be sent as he had suggested. When he got home, instead
of painting portraits he spent his time trying to make an electric
current carry a message along a wire and to invent an instrument to
receive the message. He became very poor, and moved to an attic where
he devoted himself to study and experiments. In 1835 he had devised
an alphabet consisting of dots and dashes and had invented a machine,
rough and crude but which would carry messages.