James P. Boyd

“ The spinning-wheel and loom no longer occupy a part of every home. In their stead, the farmer, as he looks beyond the thriving cornfields, beholds the reeking chimneys of a thousand mills as they proclaim the majesty of the power machines. The fabrics produced are beautiful and varied in design, and their cost so low as to excite wonder that such progress could have been the result of one hundred years of industrial activity. ”

“ If we broadly define civil engineering as the art of construction, then the birth of the art is as old as the emergence of man from savagery. The savage who hollows out a log of wood in order to construct a canoe has taken the first step in the art of shipbuilding; and when he has constructed a hut, however rude, to take the place, as an abode, of the cave hollowed out by nature, he has moved one step nearer to those triumphs of building construction which satisfy man’s necessities, comforts, and æsthetic desires. ”

“ The century which has witnessed an advance from the hazel rod to the diamond drill, from the spade to the steam shovel, from fire softening to dynamite shattering; a century during which a clumsy car pushed over cast-iron rails by a boy has grown to a cable train, and a two-hundred-pound bucket raised by women has developed into a six-ton self-dumping skip hoisted by electricity; a century productive of new devices which tunnel mountains, cross ravines, or sink through quicksands with equal ease ”

“ At the close of the last century, freedom at last planted its standard in Europe above the ruins of despotism. In the fiery torrent which swept away the ancient traditions of the Church, as well as those of the State, it seemed for a time as though religion as well as the church, right as well as might, must disappear from the surface of the earth, and that, in the smoke of battles and the revelry of reason, truth and morals must perish and anarchy prevail. ”

“ But when ethics comes to poetize, let it be said that electricity as an applied force lifts man up toward heaven,47 quickens all his appreciations of divine energy, draws him irresistibly toward the centre and source of nature’s forces. There is no dragging down and subjugation of a physical force. There is only a going out, or up, of genius to meet and to grasp it. Its universal application means the raising of mankind to its plane. If electricity be the principle of life, as some suppose, what wonder that we all feel better in an electric-car than any other? ”

“ There can be no true social progress, no real stability of government, no national prosperity worthy the name, unless the environment of each individual permits the enjoyment of personal health, if he individually observes but the ordinary care of self. And whatever else of progress for sanitary science may be granted or denied as belonging to our century, the crowning claim of all, which cannot be taken from her, is that, along with the ideas embodied in commonweal and commonwealth, she has added the other of equal dignity and worth—Public Health. ”

“ A generation later, the command of the sea enabled England and France to despatch, in unarmed transports, 63,000 men and 128 guns to the Crimea, and to land them, without opposition, for the red carnage of the Alma, Balaklava, Inkerman, and Sebastopol. Following closely upon the disease and death, the fatuity and the glory, of the Crimea, came the great war of modern times, in which the gun afloat played such a gallant part, as the blockade, with its constricting coils, slowly starved and strangled the Confederacy to death, and Farragut, on inland waters, split it in twain. ”

“ The reign of machinery in the industrial world, the advent of steam, of electricity, of compressed air, as motors, have done away with the human machine. Whether in peace or in war the skilled workman has crowded him out. Labor-saving inventions have done away with the necessity for a multiplicity of hands. The need to-day is for trained heads. From evaporated fruit and canned meats to heat, light, and inter-communication, science is brought to bear upon every detail of existence. ”

“ Never was so much consideration given to the betterment of humanity, nor was the aggregate of earnestness so great.
In our more robust intellectual world the tree is judged by its fruit, and acts tell, not creed. The principle that well-doing, unless it is disinterested, forfeits its claim to the highest respect of men, is growing in strength, whilst the feeling is gaining ground among the thoughtful that in the development of personality may be found a sufficient motive for the exercise of virtue, and that character, not reward, being not having, are the highest aims. ”

“ The eighteenth century found woman an appendage; the nineteenth transformed her into an individual. The wonderful altruistic twentieth century, whose dawn even now is breaking, will so develop this individuality that women will contend for all the rights of the individual, coöperating with the nation in the fulfillment of its mission, and with the world in the development of the eternal law of progress. ”

“ I will say that every young man in a city, either through the instrumentality of a building association when there is one, or independently, when such an association does not exist, and when at last, having toiled and waited patiently, the debt is paid and the piece of property is earned, is a great deal richer than the assessor knows him to be. The assessor goes around and puts a valuation upon his property for the purpose of taxing it. But, ah, those habits of industry and self-control; those wise measurings, which we call economy,—all these the man has gained over and above the property. ”

“ Alexander Dumas brought the matter home to the door of every man when he said, “All the world cries, ‘Where is the man who will save us? We want a man!’ Don’t look for this man, you have him at hand. This man—it is you—it is I—it is each of us.... How to constitute one’s self a man? Nothing harder if one knows not how to will it; nothing easier if one wills it.” ”

“ So careful a critic as Alexis de Tocqueville, after his visit to the United States in 1831, wrote to Jared Sparks: “Are the effects of education uniformly good? Does not a man who obtains an education above his social condition become an unquiet citizen?” The first triumph of the nineteenth century was the conquest of this fear; and there is to-day a general belief that it is the duty of each community to provide a well-developed school system, that each child may have an opportunity for making the best and highest use of his powers and capabilities. ”

“ On the sea, as on the land, the engineer has indeed “changed the face of the world;” and in no department of human progress has his influence been more radical or more far-reaching than in the mechanism, the scope, and the strategy of naval war. Fleets move now with a swiftness and surety unthought of in the days of sail. Over the same western ocean which Nelson, in his eager chase of Villeneuve, crossed at but four knots an hour, the United States cruiser Columbia swept, ninety years later, at a speed nearly four and three quarters times that of his lagging craft. ”

“ Then from the great schools and universities the developing intellect of Europe awakened to a sense of its rights. Suddenly there came inquiries into the reality of this spiritual power over human souls and over the human understanding which Rome claimed to be derived from Heaven. In its revolt against dogma, from Abélard and Arnold di Brescia to Huss and Wickliff, from Luther and Pascal to Voltaire and Rousseau, the human thought struggled for freedom under the banner of learning and of reason, and fought for the rights of the people against the privileged few. ”

“ With all the world as their own, and the gates of boundless opportunities swinging wide, there has been but one Shakespeare among men. It has been asserted that George Eliot is the Shakespeare among women and Mrs. Browning the counterpart of Bacon. But their immortality has not been tested. They lived but a little while ago. But there is one woman, at least, who has established her claim thoroughly, and whose genius twenty-five centuries have tested. Sappho is truly immortal. Her fame and genius have been sealed by the approval of all the great literati of the centuries. ”

“ The War of Secession was not only one of the most gigantic conflicts ever waged on earth, but was one which will always be of interest to the military student because of its remarkable developments in the science of warfare, and one which will ever be a source of pride to Americans because of the grim earnestness and stubborn valor displayed by the contending armies. From first to last, more than two millions of men were enrolled by the United States, and in the final campaign 1,100,000 men were actually bearing arms in the service of the Union. ”

“ There were men of noble and patriotic cast of mind, who devoted their lives to the development of this lovely and wholly humane work. They deserve to rank beside the heroes of our battlefields. Their victories were those of peace, and were followed by an increase of the delightful products of the orchard, vineyard, and garden.
Once that our forefathers were free from the bondage of European greed, this art of peace kept pace with our civilization on other lines. There is nothing in the whole list of our scientific attainments or material industries that can show more substantial progress. ”

“ Christianity, indeed, offered emancipation to women. It proclaimed a startling doctrine,—the equality of the rich and the poor, the weak and the strong, in the sight of God the Father. And it became evident that such teachings would inevitably break down the barriers of class and caste, eliminate injustice, and usher in a time when all should stand equal before the law. But alas, the world, with the exception of isolated and individual instances, has never been offered an opportunity to test the efficacy of the all-corrective principles of the religion which Christ gave to the world. ”