One man on the footboard of the locomotive, one man
shoveling into the furnaces the black powder that incloses the energy
stored in early geological ages, a half dozen men mounted on the long
train of following vehicles, combine to bring to the mill girl in
Massachusetts, the miner in Pennsylvania, the sewing woman, and the
wealthy merchant, her neighbor in New York, the flour made in
Minnesota from the grain harvested a few weeks earlier in Dakota. All
the world is served faithfully and efficiently by this unimaginable
power, this product of the brain of the inventor, protected by the
law, stimulated and aided by the capital that it has itself almost
alone produced.
And thus have the inventors of the steam engine set in motion and
placed at the disposal of mankind for every form of useful work all
the great forces of nature; thus Hero of Alexandria touched the then
concealed spring which called all the genii of earth, fire, water and
air to do the bidding of the race. Thus Papin, Worcester, Newcomen,
Watt, and Corliss and others of our own contemporaries, have applied
the genii to their task of leveling mountains, traversing seas,
continents, and the depths of the earth, building ships, locomotives,
hamlets and cities, cottages and palaces, turning the spindle,
operating the loom, and setting motion and giving energy to every
machine, doing the work of thousands of millions of men, converting
barbarism into civilization, giving necessaries of life in profusion,
comforts in plenty, and luxuries in superabundance.
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