This leads us to our last topic, for which too little room has been
left. Industrial engineering covers statical, hydraulic, mechanical,
and electrical engineering, and adds a new branch which we may call
chemical engineering. This is pre-eminently a child of the nineteenth
century, and is the conversion of one thing into another by a knowledge
of their chemical constituents.
When Dalton first applied mathematics to chemistry and made it
quantitative, he gave the key which led to the discoveries of
Cavendish, Gay-Lussac, Berzelius, Liebig, and others. This new
knowledge was not locked up, but at once given to the world, and made
use of. Its first application on a large scale was made by Napoleon in
encouraging the manufacture of sugar from beets.
The new products were generally made from what were called “waste
material.” We now have the manufacture of soda, bleaching powders,
aniline dyes, and other products of the distillation of coal, also
coal-oil from petroleum (known fifty or sixty years ago only as a horse
medicine), acetylene gas, celluloid, rubber goods in all their numerous
varieties, high explosives, cement, artificial manures, artificial ice,
beet-sugar, and even beer may now be included.
Through many ages, the alchemists, groping in the dark, and in
ignorance of nature’s laws, wasted their time in trying to find what
they called the philosopher’s stone, which they hoped would transform
the baser metals into gold.
If such a thing could be found it would be a curse, as it would take
away one of the most useful instruments we have—a fixed standard of
value.
In a little over one hundred years, those working by the light of
science have found the true philosopher’s stone in modern chemistry.
The value of only a part of these new products exceeds the nominal
value of all the gold in the world.
The value of our mechanical and chemical products is great, but it is
surpassed by that of food products. If these did not keep pace with
the increase of population, the theories of Malthus would be true—but
he never saw a modern reaper.
The steam-plough was invented in England some fifty years since, but
the great use of agricultural machinery dates from our Civil War, when
so many men were taken from agriculture. It became necessary to fill
their places with machinery. Without tracing the steps which have led
to it, we may say that the common type is what is called “the binder,”
and is a machine drawn chiefly by animals, and in some cases by a field
locomotive.
It cuts, rakes, and binds sheaves of grain at one operation. Sometimes
threshing and winnowing machines are combined with it, and the grain is
delivered into bags ready for the market.
Different machines are used for cutting and binding corn, and
for mowing and raking hay, but the most important of all is the
grain-binder. The extent of their use may be known from the fact that
75,000 tons of twine are used by these machines annually.
It is estimated that there are in the United States 1,500,000 of
these machines, but as the harvest is earlier in the South, there are
probably not over 1,000,000 in use at one time. As each machine takes
the place of sixteen men, this means that 16,000,000 men are released
from farming for other pursuits.
The “man with the hoe” has disappeared from the real world, and is only
to be found in the dreams of poets.
It is fair to assume that a large part of these 16,000,000 men have
gone into manufacturing, the operating of railways, and other pursuits.
The use of agricultural machinery, therefore, is one explanation of why
the United States produces eight-tenths of the world’s cotton and corn,
one-quarter of its wheat, one-third of its meat and iron, two-fifths of
its steel, and one-third of its coal, and a large part of the world’s
manufactured goods.