“ In building after building, floor above floor, the sight is similar: the long rows of busy machines, the whirling network of shafts and belts above, the intent operatives, and the steady clicking of innumerable parts blended into a softened widespread sound. It seems absolutely endless; it is a matter of hours to go through the plant. Stop at one of the machines and see the speed and accuracy with which it turns out its product; then calculate the entire number of machines and you will begin to gain a little idea as to what the total output of this vast institution must be. ”

“ This great and daring undertaking, which had for its object the opening up of new trade routes and lines of commerce, annihilating distance and wiping out the width of two continents between New York and Yokohama and making the Atlantic seaboard and the Pacific coast close neighbors, is the climax of man’s achievement and the greatest gift to civilization. It will help in the consummation of man’s loftiest dreams of world friendship and world peace. ”

“ After all, what is a modern rifle but a device which man has made with his brain permitting him to strike an enormously hard blow at a wonderful distance? Firearms are really but a more perfect form of stone-throwing, and this early Cave Man took the first step that has led down the ages to the present-day arms and ammunition.
This strange story of a development that has been taking place slowly through thousands and thousands of years, so that today you are able to take a swift shot at distant game instead of merely throwing stones. ”

“ This silent, invisible servant is ever present, always ready at the touch of a button or the snap of a switch, without hesitation, without grumbling, to do silently, swiftly, without dirt, without discomfort, without asking for a day off or for higher wages, the work which is laid out for it.
The use of electricity is so common today that the average person does not stop to think of it as a magical power wielding a tremendous influence for betterment in every-day affairs. ”

“ The workman who tends the vulcanizer in the rubber factory has come to take his work as a matter of course; the man who assembles a watch, or a camera, is not apt to appreciate the fact that there have been marvelous developments in his line of manufacturing; the operator of a shoe machine, or of an elevator, does not see anything startling or absorbing in the work—and so we find it almost throughout the entire list of industries. ”

“ Mythical as it may sound, yet nevertheless it is true, that man has harnessed for his use every snowflake that falls in the mountain tops and settles itself in the banks of perpetual ice and snow. How man has tapped the mountain fastnesses and converted the melting snows into a servant more powerful, more magical, more easily controlled, than Aladdin’s genii, should be known to everyone. This servant is electricity. ”

“ The evolution in cooking and heating appliances for the home in the last ten years has indeed been rapid, but it is very recently indeed that the housewife has been able to satisfy the longing and the desire that has kept getting stronger from day to day, since first she began to use electric cooking appliances. She has been dreaming of that which would make her kitchen a domestic-science laboratory, and her dream can come true because now she can purchase an electric range patterned in general style after the more acceptable gas or other fuel ranges, but infinitely more efficient. ”

“ America has captured the forces of Nature, harnessed the floods and made the desert bloom, builded gigantic bridges and arrogant skyscrapers and bored roadways through solid rock and beneath water, but the most spectacular of all spectacular accomplishments is the Panama Canal. ”

“ For a long time it has been known that plants require food the same as animals and human beings. Without food plants cannot live and grow, and just to the extent that plant food is present in the soil, to that extent will a crop be produced. The most important of plant foods is nitrogen. While the earth is literally bathed in nitrogen, this element is found to only a very slight degree in the soil. That is to say, the air which we breathe and in which we move is four-fifths nitrogen, yet in the richest soil there is seldom more than one-tenth or two-tenths of one per cent of nitrogen. ”

“ Today, the housewife, whether the provider of the home be a laborer or a merchant prince, can, with a simple touch of the button or a snap of the switch, bring to her immediate command, and subservient to her wishes, that subtle something which came in the snowflake, and which, while invisible, yet provides the greatest boon to mankind—electricity. ”

“ Diamonds are so brilliant, the radiance from the facets so bewildering to the eye, that the flaws cannot be seen by the human eye unless the imperfection is pronounced and at the top surface of the diamond. Each facet of a diamond (by reason of the method of cutting) is a window looking down a clearly defined walled chamber, like a hall-way to the culet. ”

“ It is only on this supposition that we can explain how the horizon of vision grows wider and wider the higher the position we choose, how the tops of towers and mountains at a distance become visible before the bases, how the hull of a ship disappears first as she sails away, and how, as we go from the poles towards the equator, new stars become visible. ”

“ Thread your way back through history to the time when the slender lives of men expanded into full and useful employment, and you will find that, so far as raising the world’s food is concerned, it all began with the invention of the reaper in only the last century. It is interesting to know something of the precarious entry of this machine and something of the dark background from which it emerged. ”

“ Thousands of these little machines are in daily use and, like the larger models of the addressograph, are driving drudgery out of the office—freeing thousands of hands from the monotonous, laborious task of writing names and addresses by pen and ink—in short, elevating the position of the office worker far above that of a mere automaton and making it possible for him to earn more money and enjoy a happier existence by doing brain work instead of manual labor. ”

“ To do business in the modern lofty building without the aid of elevators (or lifts, as they are called in England) is today out of the question, while the great grain-transporting edifices in cities in which our annual crops are lifted and lowered, are known by the specific name of elevators. There is, however, another means of getting up and down stairs which is coming somewhat rapidly into use and in which the old stairway is restored. It is one in which the stair itself does the moving instead of the passengers upon it. This new and interesting device is known as an escalator. ”

“ But the Fourth of July was the great hurrah time of the year, when every youth who owned a gun or could borrow one, brought it into use as a contribution to the general noise. He might lack shoes and be short of shot and bullets for hunting, but for this occasion no young man was so poor as to have failed to lay in a hornful of powder, and at the stroke of twelve midnight, which began the day, he and his companions blazed away with guns loaded to the danger point, and kept up their fusillade as long as ammunition lasted. ”

“ It can be truthfully said that the pleasure car is the father of the truck or commercial car.
The application of the internal combustion engine to the use of propelling vehicles was the beginning of a new era in that world. The idea, born, one might say, with the new century, has already done more to revolutionize transportation than all of the inventions of all the centuries that have gone before. ”

“ People in the hungry, unfed ages grew so used to privation that even the philosophers accepted sorrow and woe as a matter of course and dilated upon their virtues for chastening the human soul. “It is better to go to the house of mourning than the house of mirth,” said one of the prophets, and such words brought comfort to the hungry, miserable millions who had to mourn and go hungry whether it was to their advantage or not. ”

“ In Jersey City, N. J., several freight cars and boats loaded with dynamite and ammunition full of high explosives furnished the power for an explosion which, in July, 1916, broke considerably over a hundred thousand dollars worth of windows in the lower part of New York City.
The force of an explosion, whatever its source, throws back the air in huge waves, very much like the waves of the ocean, and whatever they come in contact with must have a sort of a tug-of-war with them, the weaker side being crumpled up and pushed back by the other. ”

“ One sees very little about it in the newspapers and popular magazines, in spite of the fact that it is the keystone, so to speak, of the motion-picture industry. Of the entire business, in all its ramifications, this machine is the most important not only from a technical standpoint, but as regards both the pleasure and safety of the public. Here, again, a great deal of money is invested. Its manufacture involves costly and highly specialized machinery, the most intelligent of mechanics and the constant thought and endeavor of the men at the head of the business. ”

“ The combs are then replaced in the hive to be refilled by the bees, thus saving them the labor of rebuilding the costly structure, increasing the quantity of extracted honey which a single colony can produce, while comb honey is produced so perfect in appearance as to cause some to believe it to be manufactured by machinery; but comb honey, nature’s most exquisite product, comes in its dewy freshness untouched by the hand of man, from the beehive to the table, a food prepared in nature’s laboratory fit for the Gods. ”

“ The experienced fisherman who smiles at the amateur’s restless fidgeting and complaining has discovered by careful observation that the fish who swims around in such an exasperating manner just a foot or so away from the temptingly baited hook has had an advance tip that something out of the ordinary is going on up above him. For sound, whether it be the noise of an oarlock or a companion’s casual remark, can be heard more than four times as easily by the fish in the water beneath than it can up above in the air. ”

“ In the early days we witness the strange spectacle of the game being indulged in by the wealthy and leisurely class on the one hand, and the idle and vicious on the other. It is easy to understand why. The first group was the logical extension of the old-world aristocracy. The second group lived in an age when the great middle class was struggling for a foothold in a new country. Men had very little time and [310] disposition for play, and this, coupled with the remnants of Puritanic influence, left the game in the hands of those who lived by their wits rather than work. ”

“ An atom is the smallest division of anything that we know about now.
A molecule of water is made up of three atoms. Evaporation of water consists of the movement of these atoms in such a way as to make the liquid water change into a gas. Freezing water into ice is caused by making the molecules, and, in turn, the atoms, stick to each other. It takes a great deal of power to separate the molecules in water, and for this reason water was long regarded as something which could not be divided up, or, in other words, a basic element, such as the oxygen in the air. ”

“ Granite is a fire-formed rock which has been exposed to great heat and pressure deep down in the earth. It is one of the most abundant of that species of rocks seen at or near the surface of the earth, and was formerly considered as the foundation rock of the globe, or that upon which all sedimentary rocks repose. Granite supplies the most durable materials for building, as many of the ancient Egyptian monuments testify. It varies a great deal in hardness as well as in color and for that reason must be selected with care when desired for building purposes. ”

“ This quick and less expensive method of manufacture rendered silver plate available to all classes, and the Sheffield plate was quickly superseded, the old method of manufacture becoming obsolete.
While the process of manufacture was cheapened, the newer craftsmen wisely held to the art standards of the old masters. With the new process came the perfection of modern construction, and the cost is so much less than in the old days that a perfect table service of authentic design, of quality beyond question and guaranteed in every respect, is within the reach of any well-to-do family. ”

“ Wherever names are written, there you will usually find the addressograph in use, saving time and money, guaranteeing 100 per cent accuracy and insuring maximum efficiency. There are many different models—some operated by hand or foot-lever, others by electric motor; some are entirely automatic. So, no matter how many names and addresses are written—fifty or a million—the addressograph, like the telephone or typewriter, has come to be recognized as a modern business necessity. ”

“ Away up in the high valleys formed among the peaks of the tallest mountain ranges of both the Rocky Mountains and the mountains of Alaska, as well as those in Switzerland and European countries, the snow freezes into great solid masses because of the intense cold, and is forced by its own pressure into vast fields and mountains of ice. This ice is not like that produced by the freezing of water, but resembles more a very hard, solid form of snow, being composed of thin layers filled with air bubbles and more brittle and less transparent than the ice we are accustomed to see. ”

“ This pictures the reaping hook as still used in India.
Today the years glide by like pleasant pictures. We are fed, busy and happy. We almost let the dead bury their dead today while the living drive forward their tasks, achieving as much in a year as the old ages did in twenty. We have learned to feed ourselves and the food fills our bodies and brains with energy which must find expression in useful accomplishment. “Blessed is he who has found his work [558] to do,” we say nowadays, “but thrice blessed is he who has found a machine to do it for him.” ”

“ The first and greatest problem attempted by the United States was to make the Canal Zone healthful. This strip of land from ocean to ocean abounded in disease-breeding swamps and filthy habitations unfit for human beings. The death-rate was appalling and the labor conditions terrible. During the first two and a half years, therefore, all energies were devoted to ridding the Isthmus of disease by sanitation, to recruiting and organizing a working force and providing for it suitable houses, hotels, messes, kitchens and an adequate food supply. ”