Part 14

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.