Knowledge is Power Part 14

Some may say that this is a case which does not apply to us; because we are free men, and cannot be compelled to perish, up to our necks in mud, upon a pittance of horse-beans, doled out by a tyrant. Exactly so. But what has made us free? Knowledge. Knowledge,--which, in raising the moral and intellectual character of every Englishman, has raised up barriers to oppression which no power can ever break down.

Knowledge,--which has set ingenious men thinking in every way how to increase the profitable labour of the nation, and therefore to increase the comforts of every man in the nation.

The people of England have gone on increasing very rapidly during the last fifty years; and the average length of life has also gone on increasing in the same remarkable manner. Men who have attended to subjects of political economy have always been desirous to procure accurate returns of the average duration of life at particular places, and they could pretty well estimate the condition of the people from these returns. Savages, it is well known, are not long livers; that is, although there may be a few old people, the majority of savages die very young. Why is this? Many of the savage nations that we know have much finer climates than our own; but then, on the other hand, they sustain privations which the poorest man amongst us never feels. Their supply of food is uncertain, they want clothing, they are badly sheltered from the weather, or not sheltered at all, they undergo very severe labour when they are labouring. From all these causes savages die young. Is it not reasonable, therefore, to infer that if in any particular country the average duration of life goes on increasing; that is, if fewer people, in a given number and a given time, die now than formerly, the condition of that people is improved; that they have more of the necessaries and comforts of life, and labour less severely to procure them? Now let us see how the people of England stand in this respect. The average mortality in a year about a century ago was reckoned to be one in thirty, and now it is one in forty-six. This result is, doubtless, produced in some degree by improvement in the science of medicine, and particularly by the use of vaccination. But making every allowance for these benefits, the fact furnishes the most undeniable truth, that the people of England are much better fed, clothed, and lodged than they were a century ago, and that the labour which they perform is far less severe.

The effect of continued violent bodily exertion upon the duration of life might be ill.u.s.trated by many instances; we shall mention one. The late Mr. Edgeworth, in his Memoirs, repeatedly speaks of a boatman whom he knew at Lyons, as an old man. "His hair," says Mr. Edgeworth, "was grey, his face wrinkled, his back bent, and all his limbs and features had the appearance of those of a man of sixty; yet his real age was but twenty-seven years. He told me that he was the oldest boatman on the Rhone, that his younger brothers had been worn out before they were twenty-five years old; such were the effects of the hards.h.i.+ps to which they were subject from the nature of their employment." That employment was, by intense bodily exertion, and with the daily chance of being upset, to pull a boat across one of the most rapid rivers in the world,--

"The swift and arrowy Rhone,"

as one of our poets calls it. How much happier would these boatmen have been during their lives, and how much longer would they have lived, could their labour have been relieved by some mechanical contrivance!

and without doubt, the same contrivance would have doubled the number of boatmen, by causing the pa.s.sage to be more used. As it was, they were few in number, they lived only a few years, and the only gratification of those few years was an inordinate stimulus of brandy. This is the case in all trades where immense efforts of bodily power are required.

The exertion itself wears out the people, and the dram, which gives a momentary impulse to the exertion, wears them out still more. The coal-heavers of London, healthy as they look, are but a short-lived people. The heavy loads which they carry, and the quant.i.ty of liquor which they drink, both together make sad havoc with them.

Violent bodily labour, in which the muscular power of the body is unequally applied, generally produces some peculiar disease. Nearly all the pressmen who were accustomed to print newspapers of a large size, by hand, were ruptured. The printing-machine now does the same description of work.

What is the effect upon the condition of pressmen generally by the introduction of the printing-machine to do the heaviest labour of printing? That the trade of a pressman is daily becoming one more of _skill_ than of _drudgery_. At the same time that the printing-machine was invented, one of the principles of that machine, that of inking the types with a roller instead of two large cus.h.i.+ons, called b.a.l.l.s, was introduced into hand-printing. The pressmen were delighted with this improvement. "Ay," said they, "this saves our labour; we are relieved from the hard work of distributing the ink upon the b.a.l.l.s." What the roller did for the individual pressman, the machine, which can only be beneficially applied to rapid and to very heavy printing, does for the great body of pressmen. It removes a certain portion of the drudgery, which degraded the occupation, and rendered it painful and injurious to health. We have seen two pressmen working a daily paper against time: it was always necessary, before the introduction of the machines, to put an immense quant.i.ty of bodily energy into the labour of working a newspaper, that it might be published at the proper hour. Time, in this case, was driving the pressman as fast as the rapid stream drove the boatman of the Rhone; and the speed with which they worked was killing them as quickly.

CHAPTER XX.

Influences of knowledge in the direction of labour and capital--Astronomy--Chronometer--Mariner's compa.s.s--Scientific travellers--New materials of manufactures--India-rubber--Gutta-percha--Palm-oil-- Geology--Inventions that diminish risk--Science raising up new employments--Electricity--Galvanism--Sun-light-- Mental labourers--Enlightened public sentiment.

Lord Bacon, the great master of practical wisdom, has said that "the effort to extend the dominion of man over nature is the most healthy and most n.o.ble of all ambitions." "The empire of man," he adds, "over material things has for its only foundation the sciences and the arts."[24] A great deal of the knowledge which const.i.tutes this dominion has been the property of society, handed down from the earliest ages. No one can tell, for instance, how the art of leavening bread was introduced amongst mankind; and yet this process, now so familiar to all, contributes as much, if not more, than any other art to the wholesome and agreeable preparation of our food. Leavening bread is a branch of chemistry, and, like that process, many other processes of chemistry have been the common property of civilized man from time immemorial. Within a few centuries, however, science has applied its discoveries to the perfection of the arts; and in proportion as capital has been at hand to encourage science, has the progress of the application been certain and rapid. The old Alchemists, or hunters after the philosopher's stone, sought to create capital by their discoveries.

They could not make gold, but they discovered certain principles which have done as much for the creation of utility in a few hundred years as the rude manual labour of all mankind during the same period. Let it not be supposed that we wish to depreciate manual labour. We only wish to show that labour is incomparably more prolific when directed by science. Mahomet Bey, the ruler of Tunis, was dethroned by his subjects.

He had the reputation of possessing the philosopher's stone, or the art of turning common metals into gold. The Dey of Algiers restored him to his throne upon condition that the secret should be communicated to him.

Mahomet, with great pomp and solemnity, sent the Dey of Algiers a plough. This was so far well. He intimated that to compel production by labour is to make a nation rich. But had he been able to transmit some of the science which now controls and guides the operations of the plough--the chemical knowledge which teaches the proper application of manures to soils--the rotation of crops introduced by the turnip-husbandry, which renders it unnecessary that the ground should ever be idle,--he would have gone farther towards communicating the real philosopher's stone.

The indirect influence, too, of a general advance in knowledge upon the particular advance of any branch of labour, is undeniable;--for the inquiring spirit of an age spreads itself on all sides, and improvement is carried into the most obscure recesses, the darkest c.h.i.n.ks and corners of a nation. It has been wisely and beautifully said, "We cannot reasonably expect that a piece of woollen cloth will be wrought to perfection in a nation which is ignorant of astronomy, or where ethics are neglected."[25] The positive influence of science in the direction of labour is chiefly exhibited in the operations of mechanics and chemistry applied to the arts, in the shape of machines for saving materials and labour, and of processes for attaining the same economy.

We have described the effects of some of these manifold inventions in the improvement of the condition both of producers and consumers. But there are many particulars in which knowledge has laboured, and is still labouring, for the advance of the physical and moral condition of us all, which may have escaped attention; because these labours operate remotely and indirectly, though not without the highest ultimate certainty and efficiency, in aiding the great business of production.

These are the influences of science upon labour, not so direct as the mechanical skill which has contrived the steam-engine, or so indirect as the operation of ethics upon the manufacture of a piece of woollen cloth; but which confer a certain and in some instances enormous benefit upon production, by the operation of causes which, upon a superficial view, appear to be only matters of laborious but unprofitable speculation. If we succeed in pointing out the extent and importance of those aids which production derives from the labours of men, who have not been ordinarily cla.s.sed amongst "working men," but who have been truly the hardest and most profitable workers which society has ever possessed, we shall show what an intimate union subsists amongst those cla.s.ses of society who appear the most separated, and that these men really labour with all others most effectually in the advancement of the great interests of mankind.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Harrison.]

When Hume thought that a nation would be behind in the manufacture of cloth that had not studied astronomy, he perhaps did not mean to go the length of saying, that the study of astronomy has a real influence in making cloth cheaper, in lessening the cost of production, and in therefore increasing the number of consumers. But look at the direct influence of astronomy upon navigation. A seaman, by the guidance of principles laid down by the great minds that have directed their mathematical powers to the study of astronomy--such minds as those of Newton and La Place--measures the moon's apparent distance from a particular star. He turns to a page in the 'Nautical Almanac,' and, by a calculation directed princ.i.p.ally by this table, can determine whereabout he is upon the broad ocean, although he may not have seen land for three months. Sir John Herschel, who unites to the greatest scientific reputation the rare desire to make the vast possessions of the world of science accessible to all, has given, in his 'Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy,' an instance of the accuracy of such lunar observations, in an account of a voyage of eight thousand miles, by Captain Basil Hall, who, without a single landmark during eighty-nine days, ran his s.h.i.+p into the harbour of Rio as accurately, and with as little deviation, as a coachman drives his stage into an inn-yard. But navigation not only depends upon lunar distances, but upon an instrument which shall keep perfect time under every change of temperature produced by variety of climate. That instrument is a chronometer. Every one who possesses a watch, however good, must have experienced the effects of heat or cold upon its accuracy, in making it go faster or slower--perhaps a minute in a week. Now if there were not an instrument that would measure time so exactly that between London and New York not a minute, or large fraction of a minute, would be lost or gained, the voyage would be one of difficulty and uncertainty. A Yorks.h.i.+re joiner, John Harrison, at the beginning of the last century, found out the principle of the chronometer, which consists in the union in the balance-spring of two metals, one which contracts under increased temperature, and one which expands; and on the contrary under diminished temperature. Harrison worked for fifty years at his discovery; and he obtained a parliamentary reward of 20,000_l._

[Ill.u.s.tration: Greenwich Observatory.]

The English chronometers are set by what is called Greenwich time. At the Greenwich Observatory a ball falls from a staff exactly at one o'clock; and by the application of electricity, a similar ball falls at the same instant at Charing Cross. The beautiful instruments that are constantly at work, and the laborious calculations which are daily proceeding, at the Observatory, are essentially necessary for the maintenance of a commerce that embraces the whole habitable globe.

But what has this, it may be said, to do with the price of clothing?

Exactly this: part of the price arises from the cost of transport. If there were no "lunar distances" in the 'Nautical Almanac,' or chronometers, the voyage from New York to Liverpool might require three months instead of a fortnight. But go a step farther back in the influence of science upon navigation. There was a time when s.h.i.+ps could hardly venture to leave the sh.o.r.e. In the days of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, a merchant who went three times over sea with his own craft, was ent.i.tled to rank as a thegn, or n.o.bleman. Long after this early period of England's navigation, voyages across the Atlantic could never have been attempted. That was before the invention of the mariner's compa.s.s; but even after that invention, when astronomy was not scientifically applied to navigation, long voyages were considered in the highest degree dangerous. The crews both of Vasco de Gama, who discovered the pa.s.sage to India, and of Columbus, princ.i.p.ally consisted of criminals, who were pardoned on condition of undertaking a service of such peril. The discovery of magnetism, however, changed the whole principle of navigation, and raised seamans.h.i.+p to a science. If the mariner's compa.s.s had not been invented, America could never have been discovered; and if America, and the pa.s.sage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, had never been discovered, cotton would never have been brought to England; and if cotton had never been brought to England, we should have been as badly off for clothing as the people of the middle ages, and the million of working men and women, manufacturers of cotton, and dealers in cotton goods, would have been without employment.

Astronomy, therefore, and navigation, both sciences the results of long ages of patient inquiry, have opened a communication between the uttermost ends of the earth; and therefore have had a slow, but certain effect upon the production of wealth, and the consequent diffusion of all the necessaries, comforts, and conveniences of civilized life. The connexion between manufactures and science, practical commerce and abstract speculation, is so intimate that it might be traced in a thousand striking instances. Columbus, the discoverer of America, satisfied his mind that the earth was round; and when he had got this abstract idea firmly in his head, he next became satisfied that he should find a new continent by sailing in a westerly course. The abstract notion which filled the mind of Columbus that the earth was a sphere, ultimately changed the condition of every living being in the Old World that then existed, or has since existed. In the year 1488, the first geographical maps and charts that had been seen in England were brought hither by the brother of Christopher Columbus. If these maps had not been constructed by the unceasing labours of men in their closets, Columbus would never have thought of discovering "the unknown land"

which occupied his whole soul. If the scanty knowledge of geography which existed in the time of Columbus had not received immense additions from the subsequent labours of other students of geography, England would not have twenty-seven thousand merchant s.h.i.+ps ready to trade wherever men have anything to exchange,--that is, wherever men are enabled to give of their abundance for our abundance, each being immensely benefited by the intercourse. A map now appears a common thing, but it is impossible to overrate the extent of the acc.u.mulated observations that go to make up a map. An almanac seems a common thing, but it is impossible to overrate the prodigious acc.u.mulations of science that go to make up an almanac. With these acc.u.mulations, it is now no very difficult matter to construct a map or an almanac. But if society could be deprived of the acc.u.mulations, and we had to re-create and remodel everything for the formation of our map and our almanac, it would perhaps require many centuries before these acc.u.mulations could be built up again; and all the arts of life would go backward, for want of the guidance of the principles of which the map and the almanac are the interpreters for popular use.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Linnaeus in his Lapland dress.]

There never was a time when man had so complete possession of the planet which he inhabits as the present. Much of the globe has yet to be explored; but how much is familiar to us that was comparatively unknown even at the beginning of the present century. How thoroughly during that period have we acclimated many of the plants of distant lands, which are now the common beauties of our gardens and greenhouses. There are thousands of timber-trees coming to rapid maturity in our parks and pleasure-grounds which thirty years ago grew only in the solitudes of California and Australia. One enterprising man, James Douglas, whose father was a working mason at Scone, bestowed upon this country, about twenty-five years ago, two hundred new species of plants which are now of common culture, and he gave us a tree of the pine-tribe, called after his name, which will in all probability become one of the most valuable of our timbers, from its strength, its rapid growth, and its enormous size. What impelled James Douglas, and hundreds of other travellers of a similar character, to encounter the perils of travel in desert regions, but the abstract love of science, which made them naturalists in their closets before they were explorers and discoverers? We are familiar with the name of Linnaeus, and the Linnean system of botany; and some may think that this great naturalist was not doing much for knowledge when he cla.s.sified and arranged what we call the vegetable kingdom. When very young, Linnaeus underwent many hards.h.i.+ps in travelling through Lapland, in search of plants. So far, some may say, he was well employed. He was equally well employed when he made such an inventory, to use a familiar term, of all the known plants of his time, as would enable succeeding naturalists to know a distinct species from an accidental variety, and to give a precision to all future botanical investigation. Other naturalists have produced other systems, which may be more simple and convenient; but the impulse which Linnaeus gave to botanical discovery, and thence to the increase of the vegetable wealth of Europe, can never be too highly appreciated.

In every branch of natural history the study of the science, in its manifold forms of cla.s.sification, is constantly leading to the most valuable discoveries connected with our means of existence. Some twenty years ago all the timber of the Hartz Forest in Germany was destroyed by a species of beetle, which, gnawing completely round the bark, prevented the sap from rising. This destructive animal made its appearance in England; and science very soon discovered the cause of the evil, and provided for its removal. If there had been no knowledge of natural history here, not a tree would have been left in our woods: and what then would have been the cost of timber. The naturalist is now carrying his investigations, with the aid of the microscope, into the lowest departments of animal life. He finds the causes of blight and mildew, and knows the species of the minutest insect that mars the hopes of the farmer and the gardener. The chemist steps in; and the ravager is destroyed or rendered less noxious.

It is to the scientific travellers that we owe the successive introduction of new materials of manufactures. Of the enormous extent in which such new materials affect production, we may form some adequate notion from the mention of three--India-rubber, Gutta Percha, and Palm-oil.

In 1853 we imported 1,940,000 lbs. of caoutchouc or India-rubber. The gum of a Brazilian-tree, discovered by some scientific Frenchman in 1735, had been employed for nearly a century for no higher purpose than rubbing out pencil-marks. After 1820 the mode of applying the substance for the production of water-proof garments was discovered. But even in 1830 we only imported 50,000 lbs. Since then caoutchouc has become one of our great materials of manufacture, applied, not only to clothing, but to useful articles of every description. Its great property of elasticity has rendered it available in numberless instances beyond those of making cloth water-proof and air-tight. When we discovered how to make India-rubber soluble by spirit, we obtained our water-proof clothes, our air-cus.h.i.+ons, and water-beds. When machinery drew out the lump of gum into the finest threads, and connected them with cotton, flax, silk, or worsted, in a braiding-machine, we became provided with every species of elastic web that can render dress at once tight and easy. But chemistry has carried the use of India-rubber further than the spirit which dissolves it, or the machinery which splits it into minute threads. Chemistry has combined it with sulphur, and thus added in a remarkable degree to its strength and its elasticity. It has made it independent of temperature. It has doubled its utility. "Vulcanized India-rubber" is one of the most valuable of recent inventions.

It is a striking characteristic of our age, and particularly as compared with the period when India-rubber was first sent to Europe, that the application of gutta percha to the arts immediately followed the discovery of the substance. In 1842, Dr. Montgomerie was observing a wood-cutter at Singapore at his ordinary labour. Looking at the man's axe he saw that the handle was not of wood, but of some material that he had not previously known. The woodman told Dr. Montgomerie that, hard as the handle was, it became quite soft in boiling water, and could be moulded into any form, when it would again become hard. It was a gum from a tree growing in various islands of the Eastern archipelago, called _pertsha_. Specimens were immediately sent to the Society of Arts; and the inquiring surgeon to the Presidency at Singapore received the Society's gold-medal. In 1842-3, Mr. Lobb, visiting these islands to collect botanical specimens, also discovered the same tree, and the gum which issues from it.

In twelve years the wonderful utility of this new material has been established in very various applications. But the gum would have remained comparatively useless but for the inventive spirit which has subdued every difficulty of a new manufacture. The substance is now applied to the humblest as well as the highest purposes. It is a clothes' line defying the weather; it is a buffer for a railway carriage. It is a stopping for a hollow tooth; it is a sheathing for the wire that conveys the electric spark across the Channel. It is a cricket-ball; it is a life-boat in the Arctic seas. It is a noiseless curtain-ring; it is a sanitary water-pipe. It resists the action of many chemical substances, and is thus largely employed for vessels in bleaching and dyeing factories; it is capable of being moulded into the most beautiful forms, and thus becomes one of the most efficient materials for multiplying works of ornamental art. The collection of gutta percha has given a new stimulus to the feeble industry of the inhabitants of Java and Sumatra, and Borneo, and a new direction to the commerce of Singapore. It has brought the people of the Indian archipelago into more direct contact with European civilization.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Elaeis Guineensis, and Cocos butyracea, yielding Palm-oil.]

What the use of gutta percha is doing for the Malays, the use of palm-oil is doing for the Africans. A great commerce has sprung up on the African coasts, in which statesmen and philanthropists see the coming destruction of the slave-trade. In 1853 we imported seventy-one million lbs. of palm-oil and eighteen million lbs. of cocoa-nut oil. The greater part of this oil is for making candles. It is equal to three-fourths of all the tallow we import. What has created this enormous manufacture of one of the most improved articles of domestic utility? Knowledge. The palm-oil candles have been brought to their present perfection by chemical and mechanical appliances, working with the most complete division of labour, carried through by the nicest economy resulting from great administrative skill. 'Price's Candle Company' is a factory, or rather a number of factories, in which, in the exact proportion that the health, the comfort, and the intelligence of the workers is maintained in the highest efficiency, the profits of the capitalist are increased. The superior quality of the products of the oil-candle factories is the result of chemistry. A French chemist discovered that fats, such as oil, were composed of three inflammable acids--two of which, called stearic and margaric, are solid; and one called oleic, fluid. Another substance called glycerine is also present.

The oil is now freed from the oleic acid and the glycerine, which interfere with its power of producing light, and the two solid acids are crystalized. What are called stearine and composite candles are thus produced, at a cost which is really less than that of the old tallow-candles, when we consider that they burn longer and with greater brilliancy, besides being freed from a disagreeable smell and from a tendency to gutter. Candles from animal fat have also been greatly improved by chemical appliances in the preparation of the tallow.

Science, we thus see, connects distant regions, and renders the world one great commercial market. Science is, therefore, a chief instrument in the production of commercial wealth. But we have a world beneath our feet which science has only just now begun to explore. We want fuel and metallic ore to be raised from the bowels of the earth; and, till within a very few years, we used to dig at random when we desired to dig a mine, or confided the outlay of thousands of pounds to be used in digging, to some quack whose pretensions to knowledge were even more deceptive than a reliance upon chance. The science of geology, almost within the last quarter of a century, has been able, upon certain principles, to determine where coal especially can be found, by knowing in what strata of earth coal is formed; and thus the expense of digging through earth to search for coal, when science would, at once p.r.o.nounce that no coal was there, has been altogether withdrawn from the amount of capital to be expended in the raising of coal. That this saving has not been small, we may know from the fact, that eighty thousand pounds were expended fruitlessly in digging for coal at Bexhill, in Suss.e.x, not many years ago, which expense geology would have instantly prevented; and have thus acc.u.mulated capital, and given a profitable stimulus to labour, by saving their waste. But geological science has not only prevented the expensive search for coal where it does not exist, but has shown that it does exist where, a few years ago, it was held impossible to find it. The practical men, as they are called, maintained that coal could not be found beneath the magnesian limestone. A scientific geologist, Dr. William Smith, held a contrary opinion; and the result of his abstract conviction is, that the great Hetton collieries have been called into action, which supply a vast amount of coal to the London market, found beneath this dreaded barrier of magnesian limestone.

Geology--however scanty its facts at present are, compared with what they will be when miners have been accustomed to look at their operations from the scientific point of view--geology can tell pretty accurately in which strata of the earth the various metals are likely to be found; and knowing, to some extent, the strata of different countries, can judge of the probability of finding the precious metals as well as the more common. Sir Roderick Murchison, in 1844, expressed his belief, in a public address, that gold existed in the great Eastern Chain of Australia. In 1849, an iron-worker in Australia, reading this opinion, searched for gold, and found it. The discovery was neglected, till an enterprising man came from California, and completed the realization of the scientific prediction. The gold-diggings of Australia are producing, by their attraction to emigrants, changes in the amount and value of labour in the United Kingdom, which may materially affect the condition of every worker in the parent-land; and they have given an immense impulse to our home industry. The importance of gold, merely as a material of manufacture, may be estimated from the fact that in Birmingham alone a thousand ounces of fine gold are worked up every week; and that ten thousand ounces are annually used in the porcelain works of Staffords.h.i.+re.

Whatever diminishes the risk to life or health, in any mechanical operation, or any exertion of bodily labour, lessens the cost of production, by diminis.h.i.+ng the premium which is charged by the producers to cover the risk. The safety-lamp of Sir Humphry Davy, by diminis.h.i.+ng the waste of human life employed in raising coals, diminished the price of coals. The contrivance is a very simple one, though it was no doubt the result of anxious and patient thought. It is a common oil-lamp, in which the flame is surrounded with a fine wire-gauze. The flame cannot pa.s.s through the gauze; and thus if the destructive gas of a coal-mine enters the gauze and ignites, the flame cannot pa.s.s again out of the gauze, and ignite the surrounding gas. Sometimes the inner flame burns with a terrible blue light. It is the symptom of danger. If the lamp were an open flame the fire-damp would shake the pit with one dreadful explosion. The safety-lamp yields a feeble light; and thus, unfortunately, the miner sometimes exposes the flame, and perishes. The magnetic mask, which prevents iron-filings escaping down the throats of grinders and polishers, and thus prevents the consumption of the lungs, to which these trades are peculiarly obnoxious, would diminish the price of steel goods, if the workmen did not prefer receiving the premium in the shape of higher wages, to the health and long life which they would get, without the premium, by the use of the mask. This is not wisdom on the part of the workmen. But whether they are wise or not, the natural and inevitable influence of the discovery, sooner or later, to lessen the cost of production in that trade, by lessening the risk of the labourers, must be established. The lightning conductor of Franklin, which is used very generally on the Continent, and almost universally in s.h.i.+pping, diminishes the risk of property, in the same way that the safety-lamp diminishes the risk of life; and, by this diminution, the rate of insurance is lessened, and the cost of production therefore lessened.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Franklin medal.]

We have given many examples of labour-saving processes produced by science. We may regard it as a compensating principle that science is constantly raising up new employments. In 1798, Galvani, an Italian physician, accidentally discovered that the muscles of a dead frog were convulsed by the body coming in contact with two metals. Soon after, Volta, another Italian physician, produced electric currents by a combination of metals in what was called the voltaic-pile. Who could have imagined that the patient working-out of the scientific principle that was evolved in the movement of Galvani's dead frog, should have raised up new branches of human industry, of the most extensive and varied utility? Galvanic batteries used to be considered amongst the toys of science. They now send an instantaneous message from London to Paris; and fill our houses with the most beautiful articles of metallic manufacture, electro-plate. About sixteen years ago it was discovered that a piece of metal might receive a fine permanent coating of another metal by the agency of galvanism. The discovery created a strong interest in men of science, and many small experiments were tried to fix a coating of copper to some other metal. Manufacturing enterprize saw the value of the discovery; which has been simply described in a popular work:--

"Diluted sulphuric acid is poured into a porous vessel; this is placed in a larger vessel containing a solution of sulphate of copper; a piece of zinc is placed in the former, and a piece of silver or of copper in the latter, and both pieces are connected by a wire. Then does the wondrous agent, electricity, begin its work; a current sets in from the zinc to the acid, thence through the porous vessel to the sulphate, thence to the silver or copper, and thence to the conducting wire back again to the zinc; and so on in an endless circuit. But electricity never makes such a circuit without disturbing the chemical relations of the bodies through which it pa.s.ses; the zinc, the silver or copper, the sulphuric acid, the oxygen, and the hydrogen--all are so far affected that the zinc becomes eaten away, while a beautiful deposit of metallic copper, derived from the decomposition of the sulphate, appears on the surface of the silver or copper. Copper is not the only metal which can be thus precipitated; gold, silver, platinum, and other metals may be similarly treated."[26]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Electro-gilding.]

When experiment had proved that every imaginable form of cheap metal could be coated with silver or gold, by the agency of electro-chemistry, an immediate demand was created for designers, modellers, and moulders.

Vases of the most beautiful forms were to be produced in metal which should have the properties of solid silver without its costliness. The common metal vase is dipped into a tank containing a solution of silver.

It is placed in connection with the wires of the galvanic battery. Atom after atom of the silver in solution clings to the vase, which soon comes out perfectly silvered. The burnisher completes its beauty. It is the same with a solution of gold. The pride of riches may boast the value of the solid plate, which tempts thieves to "break in and steal."

The n.o.bler gratification of taste may secure the beauty without the expense or risk of loss.

But the great principle thus brought into practical use is carried farther in the realms of art. It becomes a copying process. It can multiply copies of the most minute engraving without in the slightest degree deteriorating the beauty of the engraver's work. The copy is as good as the original.

The same principle of depositing one metal upon another in minute atoms has produced galvanized tinned-iron--iron which will not rust upon exposure to weather, and thus applicable to many purposes of building--and iron which can be applied to many objects of utility with greater advantage than tin-plate.

There are few houses now without their daguerreotype portraits of some member of the family. This is a portrait copied from the human face by a sunbeam. The name daguerreotype is derived from the Frenchman Daguerre, who announced his discovery at the time when our countryman, Mr. Fox Talbot, was engaged in working out the same wonderful problem. We notice this branch of recent invention merely to point out how science and art call forth mechanical labour. When every house has its little portrait, there will naturally be a great demand for frames. The manufacture of daguerreotype-frames, both here, and in the United States, has furnished a new field of employment.

Every scientific discovery, such as photography, is a step in advance of preceding discovery. If Newton had not discovered the fundamental properties of light, in the seventeenth century, we should, in all likelihood, have had no photography in the nineteenth. Abstract science is the parent of practical art.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Newton.]

It has been said by an American writer, who has published several treatises well-calculated to give the workman an elevated idea of his rights and duties, that the "man who will go into a cotton-mill,--who will observe the parts of the machinery, and the various processes of the fabric, till he reaches the hydraulic press, with which it is made into a bale, and the ca.n.a.l or railroad by which it is sent to market, may find every branch of trade, and every department of science, literally crossed, intertwined, interwoven with every other, like the woof and the warp of the article manufactured."[27] This crossing and intertwining of the abstract and practical sciences, the mechanic skill and the manual labour, which are so striking in the manufacture of a piece of calico, prevail throughout every department of industry in a highly-civilized community. Every one who labours at all profitably labours for the production of utility, and sets in motion the labour of others. Look at the labour of the medical profession. In the fourteenth century, John de Gaddesden treated a son of Edward II. for the small-pox by wrapping him up in scarlet cloth, and hanging scarlet curtains round his bed; and, as a remedy for epilepsy, the same physician carried his patients to church to hear ma.s.s. The medical art was so little understood in those days, that the professors of medicine had made no impression upon the understanding of the people; and they consequently trusted not to medicine, but to vain charms, which superst.i.tions the ignorance of the pract.i.tioners themselves kept alive. The surgical pract.i.tioners of Europe, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, put their unhappy patients to the most dreadful torture by their mode of treating wounds and broken limbs. When they amputated a leg or an arm they applied the actual cautery, or red-hot iron, to stop the effusion of blood. Ambrose Pare, one of the most eminent of the French surgeons of that period, who accompanied the army to the siege of Turin, in 1536, thus describes the mode in which he found his surgical brethren dealing with gun-shot wounds:

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ambrose Pare.]

"I was then very raw and inexperienced, having never seen the treatment of gun-shot wounds. It is true that I had read in the Treatise of Jean de Vigo on wounds in general, that those inflicted by fire-arms partake of a poisonous nature on account of the powder, and that they should be treated with hot oil of elder, mixed with a little theriac.u.m. Seeing, therefore, that such an application must needs put the patient to extreme pain, to a.s.sure myself before I should make use of this boiling oil, I desired to see how it was employed by the other surgeons. I found their method was to apply it at the first dressing, as hot as possible, within the wound, with tents and setons; and this I made bold to do likewise. At length my oil failed me, and I was fain to subst.i.tute a digestive, made of the yolk of eggs, rose-oil, and turpentine. At night I could not rest in my bed in peace, fearing that I should find the wounded, in whose cases I had been compelled to abstain from using this cautery, dead of poison: this apprehension made me rise very early in the morning to visit them; but beyond all my hopes, I found those to whom I had applied the digestive, suffering little pain, and their wounds free from inflammation; and they had been refreshed by sleep in the night. On the contrary, I found those to whom the aforesaid oil had been applied, feverish, in great pain; and with swelling and inflammation round their wounds. I resolved, therefore, that I would never burn unfortunate sufferers from gun-shot in that cruel manner again." Francis I., king of France, having a persuasion that, because the Jews were the most skilful physicians of that day, the virtue was in the Jew, and not in the science which he professed, sent to Charles V.