Modern industrial progress

Preface

We live in a world of wonders, and each one's life is of necessity so hemmed in by circumstances that none can see much beyond the horizon of his own habitat. We recognize the progress of an industry that comes within our own experience, but we know little of those wnth which we are not in personal contact. The pressman who clamps the plates upon a modern lightning newspaper press does not see anything very startling or interesting in the work; the man who pulls levers in the pulpit of a great steel-works is not apt to recognize that there has been marvellous progress in that line of manufacturing; the attendant on a bottle-blowing machine has learned to take his work as a matter of course — and so we find it through the entire list of trades and occupations. Yet each of these men is at times impressed with the remarkable advances made in some industry other than his own, because such knowledge comes to one, as it were, suddenly, and not by the almost imperceptible movement that marks progress in the work that is familiar.

The means that have brought about industrial development are worth studying. In the eighteenth century England was the one great centre of mechanical progress. She manufactured not only for Great Britain and her colonies, but for practically all other important civilized portions of the globe. Early emigrants to America did not bring with them the tools of their trades, excepting those of the simplest character. The laws of England expressly forbade the exportation of tools and machines for manufacturing, or the taking of skilled workmen to the colonies. Her statesmen desired to retain for Great Britain the position of manufacturer and supply-house for the world. Wise and laudable as was this purpose, from a strictly British point of view, the means employed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to guard England's exclusive position in mechanics and manufacturing were a prime cause of American supremacy in several industries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

For many years the restrictive laws tended to the advantage

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PREFACE of Britain, but little by little the secrets of machine tools and methods of manufacture extended more and more to the United States, Germany, France, and other countries. The immigrant weaver who sought to follow his trade in the New World a hundred or more years ago, when without a loom built one ; the printer who wished to issue a newspaper usually had to construct his own press; the tanner had to make his own vats, and the currier to fashion his own beaming knife and table; and so on through the various trades and arts.

What was the natural result? Necessity quickened ingenuity, and those who thus built from the raw material introduced improvements into the machines that they made for their own use, and, while their first work was usually crude, it often contained the germs of better things than had ever been contrived at the original centre of machine development. It was this lack of imported machines that caused American machine builders to branch out in new lines, resulting in the development of a race of mechanicians that have revolutionized construction in numerous industries, and are largely responsible for bringing about the modern rapid advances in all kinds of machinery and manufacturing processes.

This is why American steel-mills are the wonder of the world; this is why we send more ore through the locks of Sault Ste. Marie Canal, on Lake Superior, than all Europe sends of all sorts of freight through the Suez Canal ; this is why we mine coal in Pennsylvania at twice the speed it is taken out at New Castle; this is why American printing machines are used to produce the great newspapers of Europe; this is why American factory-made shoes are worn in China, India, and South Africa; this is why we make tin and terne plate better and cheaper than in Wales ; this is why Swiss watches no longer sell in- America ; and why the cargoes of cut nails that used to sail westward are replaced by cargoes of wire nails that steam to the east.

There is another side to this picture. America has not yet won all the prizes in the industrial world. Her ship-building industry might nearly as well be in the depths of the Pacific. We can hold the America cup at every trial, but we cannot hold a candle beside the beacon lights that illumine the ship-yards on the Clyde. Our native wines sell at half a dollar a bottle, while the foreign article commands four dollars. We can burn out our stomach linings with our own Kentucky whiskey, but we have to go to France and Italy for our light wines. Santos Dumont flew around the Eiffel Tower while our own Langley machine tumbled

PREFACE

Vll into the Potomac. To France we had to go to learn how to build automobiles and to Hungary to learn how to mill flour.

No armed and muscled warrior ever sprang full-grown from his cradle, and no giant industry has ever come into being in a year or a decade. It takes time to develop the machinery and acquaint the world with the advantages of a new aid to manufacturing, commerce, civilization, or human comfort. The signalfires on Sparta's hills were but the forerunners of Marconi's wireless telegraph. The stone axes of the cave-dwellers were the first types of the wonderful carving and sculpturing machines of the twentieth century. Electricity had its Franklin as well as its Edison. The Damascus blade had to come before the dynamite gun, and Gutenberg with his movable types was needed to lay the foundations for the wonderful presses and machines that roll out our modern mammoth editions of daily newspapers.

It goes without saying that this book is not a complete record of the world's industrial progress, because in the nature of things a single volume does not afford the space for so vast a record. It is only possible to select some of the more prominent industries, and to point out the strides by which they have advanced to their present proportions.

While America is now at the fore of industrial progress in many lines, owing to the conditions described, it is questionable whether she can hope to retain her lead, as many of the causes that led to the upbuilding of our industries are sure to be repeated with increased force in those other quarters of the globe that are opening up to progress and civilization, and which we have been pleased to think of heretofore as benighted regions. He who reads the chapter describing railway progress in Africa, China, Asia, Australia, etc., can hardly fail to be impressed with the idea that no man can measure the possibilities of their industrial growth. Who can say that at the close of the twentieth century Darkest Africa may not be underselling us in our home markets? Who can be sure that in the development of China and' the East there may not come an industrial supremacy that shall pale our light? How can we know that there are not now in far-off Australia some prattling Newtons, Faradays, and Roentgens who will paralyze our industries by new discoveries? Perhaps from the hills of old Peru or the broad acres of Brazil may spring new and better conditions that will leave the United States tottering along as a tail-ender in the race.

To-day the industry is exceptional in which there has not been vm

PREFACE an entire alteration and renewal in the machinery used within fifteen years. Machines have to be thrown into the scrap-heap more often because they are too slow and out of date rather than that they are worn out. Invention has been stimulated to a degree heretofore unknown, and the rewards obtained by the sale of improved machinery are so great in many cases as to stimulate experiment to a surprising degree, so much so that it has been remarked in more than one field of industry that more money has been spent in trying to improve machines than has been made by their operation. A preface is usually a word of apology, and, although it takes first position in a book, it is written last. I opine that the reason why the average preface takes the apologetic tone is that the average author at the close of his work comes to feel how inadequately he has performed his task. In my own case it is with mingled feelings of pride for America's position in the world of industry, and regret that I have been unable to present it in more complete and elaborate form, that I lay down my pen and resign this work to the mercies of the reading public.

Charles H. Cochrane.

New York, December 3, 1904,