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Page 6
To address a meeting in Glasgow gives one a feeling of pleasure; but,
before going further, I trust that when I have finished you may not be
able to say of me, as the two Highlanders did after leaving church--"Eh,
man! wasna that a grand discoorse?--it jumbled the head and confused the
understanding!" This city has brought forth one of the greatest of
men--though, like many others, he had to fight an uphill battle in his
early career--that man was James Watt. But what a career was his! and
what a benefit to all now living has proved the result of his
perseverance, for to his genius are we mainly indebted for the manifold
applications of the wondrous power of _Steam_! That word is enough; and
the engines it now propels are a powerful testimony to the talent of
the great man who brought this mighty power to bear on the vast
machinery, not only of this great country, but of the whole world.
Contrast, for one thing, the travelling facilities of Watt's early days
with those we now possess through his persevering industry. Fourteen
days was then the usual time for a journey from Glasgow to London, while
at present it can be performed in a less number of hours.
Railways! what have they not done! We see towns spring up in a few years
where only a few cottages formerly stood, and wild glens transformed
into fruitful valleys, by means of railways in their neighbourhood
developing traffic and trade, and creating employment by placing them in
communication with larger towns, and thus opening up new sources of
material prosperity. Look at the magnitude of our railways. With respect
to locomotives alone, in 1866 there were 8125 of these, and the work
performed by them was the haulage of 6,000,000 trains a distance of
143,000,000 miles. As each engine possesses a draught-power equal to 450
horses, these 8125 locomotives consequently did the work of more than
3,500,000 horses, and as the average durability of a locomotive is
computed to be about fifteen years, each will have in that time
traversed nearly 300,000 miles! Then, again, there have to be replaced
about 500 worn-out locomotives every year, at a cost for each of about
�2500 to �3000, entailing an annual expenditure of nearly �1,500,000
sterling. All this money circulates for the country's benefit, keeping
our iron, copper, and coal mines, our furnaces and our workshops, all at
work, and our people well and usefully employed, and thus proving one of
the greatest advantages of applied science and art to this country and
the world at large. If it had not been for steam, this valuable
Institution might not have been in existence, having for its chief
objects the promotion of the growth and increasing the usefulness of the
applied sciences.
We have now one of the greatest triumphs of engineering art in the Mont
Cenis Railway, and this, though worked out under great difficulties, has
proved a perfect success. Still more recently we have had brought under
our notice the bold scheme of connecting Britain and France by a tunnel
under the English Channel--a project which, but a few years ago, any one
would have been thought mad to propose; but science has proved that it
can be carried out; and it is only a few days since a large meeting was
held in Liverpool with a view of tunnelling under the Mersey, and thus
connecting Liverpool and Birkenhead. Nor do these schemes seem at all
visionary when we learn that our go-ahead Transatlantic cousins have a
project before the Legislature of New Jersey for laying wooden tubes
underground, through which the mails and small parcels will be forwarded
at the rate of 150 miles an hour! Through a similar tube, 6 feet in
diameter, laid under the East and Hudson Rivers, passengers are to be
transported from Brooklyn to Jersey city. A like scheme is in course of
construction under the Thames.[A] Another American engineering triumph
will be the railway suspension bridge proposed to be built across the
Hudson River at Peekskill, in the hilly district known to New Yorkers as
the Highlands, which is to have a clear span of 1600 feet at a height of
155 feet above high water.
Another grand and comparatively recent application of steam is in its
adaptation to agriculture. Fields are now turned up by the
steam-plough--an invention as yet in its infancy--in a manner that could
never be done by mere hand-labour. Steam-culture has already penetrated
as far north as John-o'-Groats, where I have one of the ploughs of Mr.
Howard of Bedford, and but for its assistance I could not have taken in
the land I have now worked up. So great is the demand for
steam-cultivating apparatus, not only in Britain, but throughout the
German plains and the flat alluvial soils of Egypt, that the makers have
now more orders than they can readily supply.
In all our manufactories steam proves itself the motive power, and there
is hardly a large work without it. This city can show its weaving,
spinning, bleaching, and dyeing works--all which have tended to raise
Glasgow from the small town of Watt's time to the proud position it now
holds of being the first commercial city of Scotland. In this city,
second only to Manchester in the production of cotton goods, it cannot
fail to be interesting to state, that in the first nine months of the
present year there has been exported 2,188,591,288 yards of cotton
piece-goods manufactured in this country--a larger quantity by nearly
150,000,000 yards than the corresponding period of 1867, the year of the
largest export of cotton manufactures ever known until then. Of course
Glasgow has had its share in this great branch of export trade,
rendering it large, wealthy, and populous--results which have mainly
followed from the application of science to art.
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