People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1893 — Our Pica. [ARTICLE]

Our Pica.

With the utilization of steam as a motive power, and the grand inventions that have made this century so famous, began the displacement of the age we have been describing, and largely from 1830 to 1860 was the revolution effected. We may, therefore, say that to the present generation, the old age is a matter of hearsay and tradition. Born and reared amid the splendor and magnificence of this industrial age, the most wonder? ful the world ever saw, it is not possible to make them realize its grandeur and superiority over the past only by numerous comparisons, and even these, we fear will fail to make realize and appreciate fully the valuable heritage to which they were born, and the great responsibility that rests upon them to see that in the readjustments that must take place, that the liberty of the individual and the welfare of the state are preserved. Having described the old age as fully as our time and space would permit, we now jfropose by a number of comparisons to give a clearer understanding of the present industrial and commercial systems over those that preceded them. Seventy years ago the principal implement used in harvesting grain was the hand sickle, doubtless the same kind that was used by the young men employed by Boaz, in the fields where Ruth gleaned twenty-five hundred years ago. An expert could with one of them, manage to cut and bind an acre a day. Now, a man by “changing teams” and using a selfbinder, can cut and bind twenty acres. Seventy years ago, grain was out by the hoofs of animals, pi out with a flail,

ten and twelve bushels being a fair day’s work. Now we use the steam thresher, and one hundred bushels to the man is only a fair day’s labor. Seventy years ago, the single shovel plow was used in cultivating corn, and from two to five furrows to the row made it tedious I indeed when compared to the work done with our best cultii vators. In transportation, the progress made has been greater j than in the production and preparation of farm products for I market. Seventy years ago one man and six horses would move two tons twenty miles, to-day, seven men on a fast freight will move from six hundred to a thousand tons, eight hundred miles per day. Seventy years ago, had there been average roads and usual speed by the stage, the journey from New York to San Francisco could have been made in sixty days, now it is made in from four to six days in luxurious ease, while in the former it would have been laborious aud uncomfortable. In the transmission of intelligence, the superiority of the present is, if possible, more marked, as a few instances will show.

On December 24, 1814, the treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States was signed at Ghent, and negotiations had progressed so favorably that the result was clearly foreseen weeks before, but so slow and tedious were the means of communication that although the treaty was signed on the 24th of December and the nations were at peace, a great, bloody, and useless battle was fought by the contending armies at New Orleans, January 8, 1815. An occurrence of importance among any enlightened people to-day, is known throughout the civilized world to-morrow. It is said that the result of the presidential election in 1840 was not known certainly till thirty-five days after the election, so inefficient were the means of communication. In 1892, although the area of our country had more than doubled, the result of the presidential election was known in almost every hamlet and village within twenty-four hours. Seventy years ago, the voyage from New York to Liverpool required from four to six weeks. Now it is accomplished in five days and a few hours. In all branches of manufacturing, the change has been almost as great as in transportation and transmission of intelligence. The small mechanic and his kit of tools, the “big wheel” and the “little wheel,” and the oldfashioned and ugly loom of our mothers, have given way, been displaced by the great factory with its many looms and countless spindles, and that great army of small mechanics and those that kept up the home industries, have given way to the wage system. Why, yes, even the wage system that seems so well established and so well nigh universal, is a new thing, belongs to and is a part of this new and industrial age. One more thought will be brought to impress the present generation with the vastness of the change. Franklin, Washington, Greene, Adams, Hamilton and Jefferson, w T ere great and wise men, lived in a progressive and wonderful age, and did well for humanity, but not one of them ever saw a steamship or steamboat, railroad, mower, reaper, self-binder, sewing machine, telegraph, telephone, typewriter, electric cars or street railways. All these wonderful discoveries and inventions and appliances of modern civilization, have come since their day, and belong to the new and not to the old age. The next will be the effect that each has had on the condition of the people. *(To be continued.)