"Since the Seventeenth Century when the Entrepreneur Legendre sent the minister of Louis the Fourteenth home with the rebuff "Laissez Nous Faire!" the world has made more progress than ever before. The greatest progress came in the very century in which you, Ebenezer Scrooge, were so vehemently vilified, the Nineteenth. Witness as well, that in the United States, where government was the most limited, and church was at least partially separated from state, that the greatest triumphs in the history of Mankind were achieved. Let us now delve into the incredible record of those achievements accomplished with only partial capitalism."
" In the one hundred years of the nineteenth century the world saw greater advances in science and the arts than in all the preceeding ages combined. The Human mind reels when it tries to grasp the spectactular achievements of this period, in every branch of discovery and invention. Because of their love of pure knowledge, men of gigantic intellect have sought out the mighty secrets of the universe and have raised to the sky a temple of science upon ground which stood, only a century before, only scattered and isolated stones. Close behind the worshippers of knowledge have followed the magicians of the day; chemists, engineers and electricians. At their command the spirits of air, water, earth and fire have been made to do Mans' every bidding. They propel his steamships, railway cars, and mighty engines; they make his garments; they build his houses; they illuminate his cities; they harvest his crops. For him they make ice in the tropics and grow oranges amid snow. For him they fan a heated atmosphere into cooling breezes or banish icy winds. They flash his news around the globe; they carry the sound of his voice for thousands of miles or preserve it after he is dead. Verily, the fairies and genii of old did not so much for the imaginary Solomon in all his mythical glory. That is what to teach your children."
" During the Nineteenth Century Man has made a messenger boy out of lightning and harnessed vapor to his chariot wheels and all this he regards as a matter of course. Men and Women alive in this day can remember the introduction of the first steamboat and the first locomotive. They can recall with delight their first daguerroetype. Yet their grandchildren from their cradles have been used to electric streetcars, ocean greyhounds and kodaks. They are benefited by practical applications of the discoveries of wise and patient men, but do not pause to consider the wonder of it all and how new a power science is in the world."
"It is almost impossible to realize the state of science one hundred years before. All was inchoate. Great truths, germs of much that has been developed since, had been discovered and were startling the world by their novelty and simplicity. But they stood apart, nor did Man dream of science as a single rounded and connected whole. When we regard the astonishing structure that has been built since then , the materials for which have been hewn in so many forests and quarried from so many mines, it seems incredible that a single century can have witnessed so many brilliant achievements."
"Astronomy, a hundred years prior, stood foremost of the sciences, most ancient, most advanced, of them all. The Phoenecians steered their ships by the polestar and followed the planets in their courses. Nevertheless, astonomers learned little that was new as the centuries passed. Complex lenses were unknown and with the exception of the planet Uranus, discovered by Herschel in 1781, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, no addition had been made to the solar system since the days of the Chaldeans. As for other solar systems they were scarcely dreamed of. Aldebaran, "The fixed star, the star that changeth not."; Sirius and the rest were but lights in the sky which exercised a wierd and mysterious influence over the destinies of men and were studied by sages to that end. The beginning of the Nineteenth Century, 1801, saw the discovery of Ceres, the first of the asteroids, five more were found between that date and 1847, and since then more than four hundred minor planets belonging to the same system have been cataloged. The discovery of the planet Neptune, in 1846, was the result of the triumph of mathematical reasoning which confirmed the Newtonian theory. As recently as 1836 Augusta Compte had maintained that the measurement of the distances of the stars was imposiible, the Newtonian theory incapable of proof and the chemical composition of the stars must forever remain a mystery to Mankind. Three years after this dictum, Bessel had measured the distance of the star sixty-one Cygni and Newtons' theory was abuntantly proved. Then with invention of the spectroscope, combined with discovery of spectrum analysis, enables us even to study stellar chemistry."
"At the beginning of the Nineteenth Century we knew so little of the chemistry of our own world that oxygen was a brand new discovery. Since then, what vast advances have been made in chemistry alone! Its range is almost boundless."
"Spectacular, indeed, is the progress that was made in the physical sciences during the Ninteenth Century. Three achievements alone are sufficient to crown the age with glory. These are the doctrines of the molecular constitution of matter, the determination of the mechanical equivalent of heat, leading to the theory of the conservation of energy; and the doctrine of evolution discovered by Darwin."
"One discovery leads to another and science has been applied to a myriad of practical uses. One hundred years before man possessed the germ of electricity which was developed into a wonder during the century. At the outset it was regarded as little more than a costly toy. Then the telegraph, the Trans-Atlantic cable, the electric railway, the telephone, the phonograph, the gramophone, the telautograph, the kinetoscope, and the Roentgen rays. These are things and words and ideas unheard and undreamed of a hundred years earlier. Now this electricity rings bells, opens and locks doors, lights and heats buildings, drives fans, works sewing machines, does cooking and moves elevators. It is even used to illuminate Christmas trees, the symbol that stands against Human independence and ingenuity, lit by the product of Human independence and ingenuity ~ Tragedy.
"Steam is another giant which was a puny infant in 1800. Robert Fulton, the first man to make a success of a steamboat, launched the Cleremont on August 4, 1807. It took thirty two hours to make the trip from New York to Albany. (Napoleon Bonaparte speaking to Robert Fulton said, "What sir? You would make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me. I have no time to listen to such nonsense.") Ocean greyhounds now travel from New York to Liverpool in six days. Stephensons' first locomotive, built in 1814, traveled only six miles per hour. At that time there was not a single mile of track in the whole United States. By 1899 there were almost a quarter of a million."
"At the dawn of the century there was not only no electric light, but there were few lamps and little gas. As for matches, their place was filled by tinder, flint and steel. It is almost impossible to realize the darkness of the time. The methods of illumination at the end of the Eighteenth Century were almost idendtical with those that had been used throughout the whole of Human history. The basic lamp of one hundred years prior was constructed on the same principle as those of ancient Greece and Rome, and consisted of a clay cup containg a little animal fat and a fibrous wick. Torches and tallow dips were the general mode of illumination even among the well to do. Argend burners were introduced at the very end of the Eighteenth Century, but they were not sufficiently improved or cheapened to come into use until 1830. Gas was first used for out-door illumination in 1813, when Westminster Bridge in London was first lighted by it. From there its' use spread all over the world. Man, who for ages, who had revered or feared gas as a demon, made it his servant and turned it to his uses. Since Franklin caught the lightning with his kite and key, electricity, the Nineteenth Century miracle, rapidly superceded gas, bringing light into the darkness. Its' searchlight penetrates the deepest caverns, explores the depths of the oceans, illuminates for the surgeon the opaque and exposes the interior mechanisms of men without the aid of a knife. During the Nineteenth Century the practice of medicine and surgery underwent magical changes. The combined uses of anesthetics and antiseptics revolutionized surgery, robbing the knife of its' terrors and rendering possible a multitude of difficult life saving operations. Not until 1847 did the era of anesthetics begin, enabling the surgeon to eliminate the agony of his patient and allow him to perform the boldest feats with quiet confidence and leisure."
"All these achievements, however, pale compared to the greatest scientific breakthrough of the Nineteenth Century and all centuries previous- The establishment of the doctrine of evolution. Through it the mental horizon was immeasurably expanded. Darwins' courageous mind, more than any other in the century, advanced the light of Human understanding to spectacular heights. When the century began there were educated men who gravely maintained that fossils were 'sports of nature', 'created' already dead and petrified. As late as 1857 , Gosse, the English naturalist, held that all the evidences of convulsive changes and long epochs in strata, rocks, minerals and fossils were simply "appearances" all created at the same time. Many held that this was so because god put them there to test our faith. Men will go to any length in the defense of a bias."
"Many have been the centuries' discoveries in the field of biology and enormous their influence on the practice of medicine. The discoveries of the cell theory and the science of embryology, the germ theory of disease and the nature and function of the white corpuscles or leucocytes have all been turned to account. Men such as Pastuer and Koch devised ways to render powerless the most dreaded zymotic diseases and to put to flight the deadly bacilli."
"At the dawn of the century the sciences of Man, languages and societies were yet unborn. Questions as to the antiquity of Man had not yet arisen. The figures of speech of the mythical Moses were interpreted literally and the Universe was believed to have been created exactly as it is now, only six thousand years prior. Now we know that its' origins go back through aeons of time. Anthropology, philology, sociology, and economics are all children of the Nineteenth Century, and attained full stature in that one hundred years through the triumph of the comparitive method of study. The history of the growth of articulate speech and of all language was sought and found, as was the history of the development and growth of most of the customs and institutions of Man. Not only have the stories of the ancient civilizations on the banks of the Tigris, the Euphrates and the Nile been traced out for us in bewildering detail, but we have been made conversant with the minutest particulars of the life of pre-historic Man. With pick and spade the devotees of anthropology and archeology have laid bare the secrets of old mother Earth."
"Perhaps the most profound of events of the Nineteenth Century, which would have overwhelming consequences in the Twentieth Century, was Charles Baddages' (1792-1871) invention of the computer. In the 1820s he developed the Difference Engine, and in the 1830s the Analytical Engine. In 1832 he published the 'Economy of Machines and Manufacturers'.
"While one army of workers examined the past ages, others were solving the problems of the present. Slavery was finally abolished, in spite of the Biblical teachings, amongst civilized nations, and slave traffic was driven from the high seas. Education, both elementary and higher, is now an established fact in enlightened countries. Although the theocracies, following Biblical teachings, still ban women from reading. Colleges and universities place a thorough education within the reach of every young man or women willing to take the trouble to attain it. Comfortable hospitals under the management of expert physicians and capable nurses open their doors to the sick. Insanity is dealt with as a disease and not as a crime. Finally, with Bible swept aside and government placed in check, the deaf hear, the dumb speak and the blind are well -nigh as efficient as those who see. Libraries in every town of any importance yield the treasures of the great minds of all ages to all. The price of books in the Nineteenth Century is so low that every working man can possess his own library. Lithography and the engraved illustrate ten cent magazines with pictures that fifty years before were beyond the reach of all save the enlightened rich. He who now wishes to present his likeness to a friend has the sun for a painter and is no longer obliged to pay hundreds of dollars for a portrait. The news of the world may now be had for a penny, within a few hours of its' happening, and for a few cents private letters are carried by steam to the antipodes."
"Not the least among the achievements of the Nineteenth Century was what was done for the farmer and through him for the hungry world he feeds. A hundred years ago wooden plows were in use that were not dissimilar from the one driven by Elisha. At that time there were no reaping machines. In the heat of midsummer, with no protection from the broiling sun, the working men of the world gathered the harvest, sickles in hand, while the women crept after them, knealing while they bound the sheaves. So trying was the work that double wages were paid for harvesting and farmers engaged their men months in advance of the time. A little more than fifty years of American invention changed all this. Seedtime and harvest are no longer the dreaded task as machinery invented by the free mind has cone to the rescue. Since 1800 farmers have gone from sweating out a few acres of land to feed their own family or a small community to feeding the world, and toiling behind horse-drawn hand plows to riding comfortably on harvesters that do the work of twenty men. In 1800 there was no farm manufacturing industry in existence, by 1899 factories were turning out 150,000 self-binding harvesters a year."
"And on ~ And on ~ And on ~ bridges built over chasms nobody thought possible to cross, tunnels cut through mountain ranges that faith never dented, mile after mile of canals dug where ships and barges transport people and goods to places thought unreachable. The Suez Canal is built linking whole oceans. Oil and gold fields are discovered. Science, commerce, exploration, discovery, and civilization all had their bounderies exploded. What one hundred centuries of magic, religion, empire, war, monarchy, and all other attempts to control and subjugate the mind of Man failed to do... free minds in free markets did in ONE. CREDO QUIA CERTUM.
GOING FOR THE ONE
