_ What a tremendous affair it was, the world of Homer, with its
indeterminate boundaries, vast regions, and immeasurable distances.
The Mediterranean and the Euxine were illimitable stretches of ocean
waste over which years could be spent in endless wandering. On their
mysterious shores were the improbable homes of impossible peoples.
The Great Sea, the Broad Sea, the Boundless Sea; the Ethiopians,
"dwelling far away, the most distant of men," and the Cimmerians,
"covered with darkness and cloud," where "baleful night is spread
over timid mortals." Phonicia was a sore journey, Egypt simply
unattainable, while the Pillars of Hercules marked the extreme edge
of the universe. Ulysses was nine days in sailing from Ismarus the
city of the Ciconians, to the country of the Lotus-eaters--a period
of time which to-day would breed anxiety in the hearts of the
underwriters should it be occupied by the slowest tramp steamer in
traversing the Mediterranean and Black Seas from Gibraltar to
Sebastopol.
Homer's world, restricted to less than a drummer's circuit, was
nevertheless immense, surrounded by a thin veneer of universe--the
Stream of Ocean. But how it has shrunk! To-day, precisely charted,
weighed, and measured, a thousand times larger than the world of
Homer, it is become a tiny speck, gyrating to immutable law through a
universe the bounds of which have been pushed incalculably back. The
light of Algol shines upon it--a light which travels at one hundred
and ninety thousand miles per second, yet requires forty-seven years
to reach its destination. And the denizens of this puny ball have
come to know that Algol possesses an invisible companion, three and a
quarter millions of miles away, and that the twain move in their
respective orbits at rates of fifty-five and twenty-six miles per
second. They also know that beyond it are great chasms of space,
innumerable worlds, and vast star systems.
While much of the shrinkage to which the planet has been subjected is
due to the increased knowledge of mathematics and physics, an equal,
if not greater, portion may be ascribed to the perfection of the
means of locomotion and communication. The enlargement of stellar
space, demonstrating with stunning force the insignificance of the
earth, has been negative in its effect; but the quickening of travel
and intercourse, by making the earth's parts accessible and knitting
them together, has been positive.
The advantage of the animal over the vegetable kingdom is obvious.
The cabbage, should its environment tend to become worse, must live
it out, or die; the rabbit may move on in quest of a better. But,
after all, the swift-footed creatures are circumscribed in their
wanderings. The first large river almost inevitably bars their way,
and certainly the first salt sea becomes an impassable obstacle.
Better locomotion may be classed as one of the prime aims of the old
natural selection; for in that primordial day the race was to the
swift as surely as the battle to the strong. But man, already pre-
eminent in the common domain because of other faculties, was not
content with the one form of locomotion afforded by his lower limbs.
He swam in the sea, and, still better, becoming aware of the buoyant
virtues of wood, learned to navigate its surface. Likewise, from
among the land animals he chose the more likely to bear him and his
burdens. The next step was the domestication of these useful aids.
Here, in its organic significance, natural selection ceased to
concern itself with locomotion. Man had displayed his impatience at
her tedious methods and his own superiority in the hastening of
affairs. Thenceforth he must depend upon himself, and faster-
swimming or faster-running men ceased to be bred. The one, half-
amphibian, breasting the water with muscular arms, could not hope to
overtake or escape an enemy who propelled a fire-hollowed tree trunk
by means of a wooden paddle; nor could the other, trusting to his own
nimbleness, compete with a foe who careered wildly across the plain
on the back of a half-broken stallion.
So, in that dim day, man took upon himself the task of increasing his
dominion over space and time, and right nobly has he acquitted
himself. Because of it he became a road builder and a bridge
builder; likewise, he wove clumsy sails of rush and matting. At a
very remote period he must also have recognized that force moves
along the line of least resistance, and in virtue thereof, placed
upon his craft rude keels which enabled him to beat to windward in a
seaway. As he excelled in these humble arts, just so did he add to
his power over his less progressive fellows and lay the foundations
for the first glimmering civilizations--crude they were beyond
conception, sporadic and ephemeral, but each formed a necessary part
of the groundwork upon which was to rise the mighty civilization of
our latter-day world.
Divorced from the general history of man's upward climb, it would
seem incredible that so long a time should elapse between the moment
of his first improvements over nature in the matter of locomotion and
that of the radical changes he was ultimately to compass. The
principles which were his before history was, were his, neither more
nor less, even to the present century. He utilized improved
applications, but the principles of themselves were ever the same,
whether in the war chariots of Achilles and Pharaoh or the mail-coach
and diligence of the European traveller, the cavalry of the Huns or
of Prince Rupert, the triremes and galleys of Greece and Rome or the
East India-men and clipper ships of the last century. But when the
moment came to alter the methods of travel, the change was so
sweeping that it may be safely classed as a revolution. Though the
discovery of steam attaches to the honour of the last century, the
potency of the new power was not felt till the beginning of this. By
1800 small steamers were being used for coasting purposes in England;
1830 witnessed the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway;
while it was not until 1838 that the Atlantic was first crossed by
the steamships Great Western and Sirius. In 1869 the East was made
next-door neighbour to the West. Over almost the same ground where
had toiled the caravans of a thousand generations, the Suez Canal was
dug. Clive, during his first trip, was a year and a half en route
from England to India; were he alive to-day he could journey to
Calcutta in twenty-two days. After reading De Quincey's hyperbolical
description of the English mail-coach, one cannot down the desire to
place that remarkable man on the pilot of the White Mail or of the
Twentieth Century.
But this tremendous change in the means of locomotion meant far more
than the mere rapid transit of men from place to place. Until then,
though its influence and worth cannot be overestimated, commerce had
eked out a precarious and costly existence. The fortuitous played
too large a part in the trade of men. The mischances by land and
sea, the mistakes and delays, were adverse elements of no mean
proportions. But improved locomotion meant improved carrying, and
commerce received an impetus as remarkable as it was unexpected. In
his fondest fancies James Watt could not have foreseen even the
approximate result of his invention, the Hercules which was to spring
from the puny child of his brain and hands. An illuminating
spectacle, were it possible, would be afforded by summoning him from
among the Shades to a place in the engine-room of an ocean greyhound.
The humblest trimmer would treat him with the indulgence of a child;
while an oiler, a greasy nimbus about his head and in his hand, as
sceptre, a long-snouted can, would indeed appear to him a demigod and
ruler of forces beyond his ken.
It has ever been the world's dictum that empire and commerce go hand
in hand. In the past the one was impossible without the other. Rome
gathered to herself the wealth of the Mediterranean nations, and it
was only by an unwise distribution of it that she became emasculated
and lost both power and trade. With a just system of economics it is
highly probable that for centuries she could have held back the
welling tide of the Germanic peoples. When upon her ruins rose the
institutions of the conquering Teutons, commerce slipped away, and
with it empire. In the present, empire and commerce have become
interdependent. Such wonders has the industrial revolution wrought
in a few swift decades, and so great has been the shrinkage of the
planet, that the industrial nations have long since felt the
imperative demand for foreign markets. The favoured portions of the
earth are occupied. From their seats in the temperate zones the
militant commercial nations proceed to the exploitation of the
tropics, and for the possession of these they rush to war hot-footed.
Like wolves at the end of a gorge, they wrangle over the fragments.
There are no more planets, no more fragments, and they are yet
hungry. There are no longer Cimmerians and Ethiopians, in wide-
stretching lands, awaiting them. On either hand they confront the
naked poles, and they recoil from unnavigable space to an intenser
struggle among themselves. And all the while the planet shrinks
beneath their grasp.
Of this struggle one thing may be safely predicated; a commercial
power must be a sea power. Upon the control of the sea depends the
control of trade. Carthage threatened Rome till she lost her navy;
and then for thirteen days the smoke of her burning rose to the
skies, and the ground was ploughed and sown with salt on the site of
her most splendid edifices. The cities of Italy were the world's
merchants till new trade routes were discovered and the dominion of
the sea passed on to the west and fell into other hands. Spain and
Portugal, inaugurating an era of maritime discovery, divided the new
world between them, but gave way before a breed of sea-rovers, who,
after many generations of attachment to the soil, had returned to
their ancient element. With the destruction of her Armada Spain's
colossal dream of colonial empire passed away. Against the new power
Holland strove in vain, and when France acknowledged the superiority
of the Briton upon the sea, she at the same time relinquished her
designs upon the world. Hampered by her feeble navy, her contest for
supremacy upon the land was her last effort and with the passing of
Napoleon she retired within herself to struggle with herself as best
she might. For fifty years England held undisputed sway upon the
sea, controlled markets, and domineered trade, laying, during that
period, the foundations of her empire. Since then other naval powers
have arisen, their attitudes bearing significantly upon the future;
for they have learned that the mastery of the world belongs to the
masters of the sea.
That many of the phases of this world shrinkage are pathetic, goes
without question. There is much to condemn in the rise of the
economic over the imaginative spirit, much for which the energetic
Philistine can never atone. Perhaps the deepest pathos of all may be
found in the spectacle of John Ruskin weeping at the profanation of
the world by the vandalism of the age. Steam launches violate the
sanctity of the Venetian canals; where Xerxes bridged the Hellespont
ply the filthy funnels of our modern shipping; electric cars run in
the shadow of the pyramids; and it was only the other day that Lord
Kitchener was in a railroad wreck near the site of ancient Luxor.
But there is always the other side. If the economic man has defiled
temples and despoiled nature, he has also preserved. He has policed
the world and parked it, reduced the dangers of life and limb, made
the tenure of existence less precarious, and rendered a general
relapse of society impossible. There can never again be an
intellectual holocaust, such as the burning of the Alexandrian
library. Civilizations may wax and wane, but the totality of
knowledge cannot decrease. With the possible exception of a few
trade secrets, arts and sciences may be discarded, but they can never
be lost. And these things must remain true until the end of man's
time upon the earth.
Up to yesterday communication for any distance beyond the sound of
the human voice or the sight of the human eye was bound up with
locomotion. A letter presupposed a carrier. The messenger started
with the message, and he could not but avail himself of the
prevailing modes of travel. If the voyage to Australia required four
months, four months were required for communication; by no known
means could this time be lessened. But with the advent of the
telegraph and telephone, communication and locomotion were divorced.
In a few hours, at most, there could be performed what by the old way
would have required months. In 1837 the needle telegraph was
invented, and nine years later the Electric Telegraph Company was
formed for the purpose of bringing it into general use. Government
postal systems also came into being, later to consolidate into an
international union and to group the nations of the earth into a
local neighbourhood. The effects of all this are obvious, and no
fitter illustration may be presented than the fact that to-day, in
the matter of communication, the Klondike is virtually nearer to
Boston than was Bunker Hill in the time of Warren.
A contemporaneous and remarkable shrinkage of a vast stretch of
territory may be instanced in the Northland. From its rise at Lake
Linderman the Yukon runs twenty-five hundred miles to Bering Sea,
traversing an almost unknown region, the remote recesses of which had
never felt the moccasined foot of the pathfinder. At occasional
intervals men wallowed into its dismal fastnesses, or emerged gaunt
and famine-worn. But in the fall of 1896 a great gold strike was
made--greater than any since the days of California and Australia;
yet, so rude were the means of communication, nearly a year elapsed
before the news of it reached the eager ear of the world. Passionate
pilgrims disembarked their outfits at Dyea. Over the terrible
Chilcoot Pass the trail led to the lakes, thirty miles away.
Carriage was yet in its most primitive stage, the road builder and
bridge builder unheard of. With heavy packs upon their backs men
plunged waist-deep into hideous quagmires, bridged mountain torrents
by felling trees across them, toiled against the precipitous slopes
of the ice-worn mountains, and crossed the dizzy faces of innumerable
glaciers. When, after incalculable toil they reached the lakes, they
went into the woods, sawed pine trees into lumber by hand, and built
it into boats. In these, overloaded, unseaworthy, they battled down
the long chain of lakes. Within the memory of the writer there
lingers the picture of a sheltered nook on the shores of Lake Le
Barge, in which half a thousand gold seekers lay storm-bound. Day
after day they struggled against the seas in the teeth of a northerly
gale, and night after night returned to their camps, repulsed but not
disheartened. At the rapids they ran their boats through, hit or
miss, and after infinite toil and hardship, on the breast of a
jarring ice flood, arrived at the Klondike. From the beach at Dyea
to the eddy below the Barracks at Dawson, they had paid for their
temerity the tax of human life demanded by the elements. A year
later, so greatly had the country shrunk, the tourist, on
disembarking from the ocean steamship, took his seat in a modern
railway coach. A few hours later, at Lake Bennet, he stepped aboard
a commodious river steamer. At the rapids he rode around on a
tramway to take passage on another steamer below. And in a few hours
more he was in Dawson, without having once soiled the lustre of his
civilized foot-gear. Did he wish to communicate with the outside
world, he strolled into the telegraph office. A few short months
before he would have written a letter and deemed himself favoured
above mortals were it delivered within the year.
From man's drawing the world closer and closer together, his own
affairs and institutions have consolidated. Concentration may typify
the chief movement of the age--concentration, classification, order;
the reduction of friction between the parts of the social organism.
The urban tendency of the rural populations led to terrible
congestion in the great cities. There was stifling and impure air,
and lo, rapid transit at once attacked the evil. Every great city
has become but the nucleus of a greater city which surrounds it; the
one the seat of business, the other the seat of domestic happiness.
Between the two, night and morning, by electric road, steam railway,
and bicycle path, ebbs and flows the middle-class population. And in
the same direction lies the remedy for the tenement evil. In the
cleansing country air the slum cannot exist. Improvement in road-
beds and the means of locomotion, a tremor of altruism, a little
legislation, and the city by day will sleep in the country by night.
What a play-ball has this planet of ours become! Steam has made its
parts accessible and drawn them closer together. The telegraph
annihilates space and time. Each morning every part knows what every
other part is thinking, contemplating, or doing. A discovery in a
German laboratory is being demonstrated in San Francisco within
twenty-four hours. A book written in South Africa is published by
simultaneous copyright in every English-speaking country, and on the
following day is in the hands of the translators. The death of an
obscure missionary in China, or of a whisky smuggler in the South
Seas, is served up, the world over, with the morning toast. The
wheat output of Argentine or the gold of Klondike is known wherever
men meet and trade. Shrinkage or centralization has been such that
the humblest clerk in any metropolis may place his hand on the pulse
of the world. And because of all this, everywhere is growing order
and organization. The church, the state; men, women, and children;
the criminal and the law, the honest man and the thief, industry and
commerce, capital and labour, the trades and the professions, the
arts and the sciences--all are organizing for pleasure, profit,
policy, or intellectual pursuit. They have come to know the strength
of numbers, solidly phalanxed and driving onward with singleness of
purpose. These purposes may be various and many, but one and all,
ever discovering new mutual interests and objects, obeying a law
which is beyond them, these petty aggregations draw closer together,
forming greater aggregations and congeries of aggregations. And
these, in turn, vaguely merging each into each, present glimmering
adumbrations of the coming human solidarity which shall be man's
crowning glory.
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA.
January 1900. _