The Scientific Basis of National Progress, Including that of Morality - Gore George

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and all the metals, by the industrial applications of science, has greatly increased the value of land under which those substances lie. The value of cultivated land has been everywhere increased by the discoveries of agricultural chemistry. Land has also been required for railways in nearly all parts of the kingdom, and has thereby been considerably raised in value. Discoveries produce inventions, inventions give rise to processes and manufactures, the employment of workmen and others, and the erection of workshops and dwellings, and these have rapidly increased the value of building ground. In Lancashire the value of such ground has been greatly increased by the inventions of the steam-engine and machinery, the discovery of chlorine, and their application to cotton manufacture. In all the great manufacturing districts, and in all the chief centres of industry, a similar result has occurred. Wherever a railway has been constructed, the value of land has also increased in consequence of the increased facilities of communication. All these great additions to the value of land are largely due to the unpaid labours of scientific discoverers, and it may be said that this nation has largely gained its wealth, and is still living in a great degree on the products of those labours. Those great additions to the value of land are also permanent, are continually increasing, and are largely independent of any exertions on the part of the owners. That many other influences, besides that of science, have contributed to the development of our manufacturing and commercial prosperity is also true, but it would be foreign to the subject of the present chapter to point them out.

      It is a fallacious argument to say that scientific discovery and increased value of land are only remotely connected together, a cause as certainly produces its effect, however many connections lie between them, provided the connections are certain – the number of links in a chain makes no difference in the transmission of motion from one end of it to the other. Great causes are frequently distant and wide-spread in their effects. Persons in general can easily understand that an acorn planted in the ground will in the course of time become an oak, because it is a palpable and visible effect; but they cannot so readily perceive that the benefits resulting from a knowledge of science ramify through all our manufacturing, artistic, and commercial occupations, our social and moral relations, and our every-day life, not because the dependence of our welfare upon science is less real, but partly because the connection between the two is less understood.

      Not only has science benefited manufacturers, but also operatives, because the extension of science to manufacturing purposes has compelled them to make themselves acquainted with intellectual subjects. "Instead of remaining mere machines, mechanically performing the work set before them, they are obliged to exercise the faculties of observation and judgment in watching the results and directing the action of mechanical, physical, and chemical powers. Instead of following the blind path of experience, using unknown forces to accomplish some definite result, they pursue their labours with the aid of known and certain laws." It is true that in many cases artisans who have acquired a little knowledge of science have thereby been rendered conceited and unfit for their special employment, and this has made many manufacturers object to technical scientific education for their servants; but this would not be so much the case if scientific knowledge were more generally and equally diffused. Arguments are not unfrequently adduced to support the opinion that ignorance has its advantages; but, however great the advantages of ignorance may be, those of knowledge are greater.

      In consequence of the labours of scientific discoverers and inventors, the progress of science is such that in a very few years a knowledge of it will be indispensible to all persons engaged in superintending or carrying out manufacturing operations, and in all arts, occupations and appointments in which man is dealing with matter. Science is fast penetrating into all our manufactures and occupations, and "those who are unscientific will have much less employment and will be left behind in the race of life." England also will be compelled, by the necessities of human progress and the advance of foreign intellect, to determine and recognize the proper value of scientific research as a basis of progress. National superiority can only be maintained by being first in the race, and not by buying inventions of other nations.

      The philosophy of matter is the foundation of all manufacturing arts and artistic processes; technical education, or the relation of science to manufactures, &c., can only be properly imparted upon the basis of a sufficient knowledge of theoretical science. Science tends to abbreviate mental and bodily labour. The use of our reason saves us the labour of using our senses, because it enables us to know that under certain conditions a certain effect must occur. The use of our reason and senses also saves us using our hands.

      The properties of a single substance are so numerous that if a workman was to thoroughly study the whole of them, he would become a scientific authority in the subjects of heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and chemistry. A blacksmith who knew all the physical and chemical properties and relations of iron and steel would be quite a scientific philosopher.

      No man has more occasion to bless the introduction of the steam-engine, machinery, the galvanic battery, and science in general, than the working mechanic, because it has mitigated his physical toil by giving him the duty of simply directing the labour instead of actually performing it; whilst it has deprived him of one kind of employment it has provided him with something better. But a few years ago the operatives in the silver-plating trade had to lay the silver on the articles with their hands, with the aid of a soldering iron; now they have simply to set their batteries in action and watch the electricity doing it for them. In a similar manner the working engineer at his metal-turning lathe has merely to direct the action of his tools whilst the steam-engine performs the heavy labour of turning.

      There is not a man in this kingdom who has not derived some advantage, in one way or another, from scientific research. The advantages of gas light, electric light, rapid postal service and transmission of goods, railway travelling, steam-ships for navigation, cotton apparel, photography, cheap pottery, improved medicine and surgery, telegraphic forecasts of weather, Australian preserved meats, &c., &c., have been reaped more or less by everyone, even the very paupers. Not only has travelling been considerably cheapened and immensely increased, but also rendered more safe: – in travelling by diligence in France the average number of persons injured was 1 to every 30,000 carried; and killed, 1 in every 335,000; but by railway, notwithstanding the average length of the journey has greatly increased, the former has been diminished to 1 in 580,000, and the latter to one in five millions; safety in travelling by sea has also been greatly increased by means of improved lighthouses. By the rapid transmission of messages by telegraphs and of commodities by steam-ships and railways, the horrors of famine have been largely diminished; the health of this nation has also been improved by greater variety of foods, and the increasing cost of meat has been restrained. It is well known that in periods of famine, the great loss of life has arisen, not from universal scarcity of food, but from the loss of time in ordering and conveying it. Whilst also the steam-engine has been the means of relieving hundreds of thousands of men from mere animal toil; it has, with the aid of the printing-press, supplied them with cheap daily intelligence.

      Science has also proved itself to be a great source of employment, as well as wealth. By developing new processes it has given employment to whole armies of workmen in numerous arts, manufactures, and occupations. Some of those employments necessitating scientific training. About 300,000 persons are employed on railways alone in Great Britain, besides those who were engaged in their construction; and in the postal department alone of the telegraph service of this country more than fifteen thousand operatives are employed. Chemical works also find employment for twenty-six thousand, and gasworks for ten thousand work people. The telegraphs of the United States of America alone, provide employment for about 7,000 persons; and the railways of the world employ about 1,900,000 men.

      It may be objected that the extension of science in this country, instead of increasing employment for workmen has produced an opposite effect, by so increasing the production of goods by machinery, and by physical and chemical processes, that we have glutted the markets of the world in years gone by, and are now suffering the results of over-production. This is a very limited view of the case; over-production is only true of particular manufactures, and is a result of ill-directed commercial energy, to which manufacturing skill is only a servant. The objection also contains its own reply; – that it is certainly much greater to our advantage to have supplied other nations with manufactured commodities, than that other nations should have supplied us, as they would have

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