Extracts from Mr. Galt’s Lecture, on “The Times we Live in,” to the Sherbrooke Library Association and Mechanics’ Institute.

STEAM POWER AND JOINT STOCK COMPANIES

Steam is unquestionably the great discovery of modern days, if we judge by its effects as seen all around us. Its untiring power represents the labor of millions—it brings within the reach of all that which was formerly confined to the use of princes—it makes at once the cotton shirt of the slave, and the bridal dress of the Princess—its products are seen in the interior of the African desert, and in the Monarch’s palace. Here it makes the axe that clears the forest—there it prints the sheet that clears the rubbish of ignorance from the human mind—here it makes the most delicate fabric of the loom—there it forces with irresistible power the mighty steamship against the winds and waves of stormy ocean. The geni of Aladdin’s lamp never performed a tithe of the miracles which steam now daily executes; it is the mightiest servant ever man possessed, and vast indeed are the results of its untiring labor. Without the steam engine the products of the mine could never be raised in quantities adequate to supply man’s increasing wants. Without it the iron could never be framed for its thousand diverse uses—the millions of bales of cotton could never be used to clothe the naked—in short, when we see how dependent we are upon its universal service, we can scarcely understand how the world work was done in ancient days.

With the discovery of the applicability of steam power, human ingenuity has been taxed to adapt it to their varied wants. When Watt’s steam engine had shown the world the mighty agent it possessed, Arkwright invented the machinery for cotton spinning, followed by Whitney’s cotton gin, and subsequently by the power loom. It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the importance of these inventions in the history of our own times. To the invention of Arkwright it has been said with much appearance of truth, Great Britain mainly owes her manufacturing and commercial pre-eminence. The cotton jinny, it is said, pays the national debt of England, and so vast has become this branch of national industry, that the value of cotton goods exported from Great Britain during the last year, exceeded the enormous sum of $150,000,000. Yet it would have been impossible to have furnished the raw material for this enormous trade, had not Whitney, an American, by the invention of the cotton gin superceded one of the most laborious processes in the preparation of raw cotton for market.

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