by a man approaching middle age, who said he hadn't had a college

education, that he had got his education in a printing office, and had

graduated from there into the patent office, where he had been a clerk

now for a great many years. Then he continued to this effect:

The essayist contrasted the America of to-day with the America of bygone

times, and certainly the result is the exhibition of a mighty progress.

But I think he a little overrated the college-culture share in the

production of that result. It can no doubt be easily shown that the

colleges have contributed the intellectual part of this progress,

and that that part is vast; but that the material progress has been

immeasurably vaster, I think you will concede. Now I have been looking

over a list of inventors--the creators of this amazing material

development--and I find that they were not college-bred men. Of course

there are exceptions--like Professor Henry of Princeton, the inventor of

Mr. Morse's system of telegraphy--but these exceptions are few. It is

not overstatement to say that the imagination-stunning material

development of this century, the only century worth living in since time

itself was invented, is the creation of men not college-bred. We think

we see what these inventors have done: no, we see only the visible vast

frontage of their work; behind it is their far vaster work, and it is

invisible to the careless glance. They have reconstructed this nation--

made it over, that is--and metaphorically speaking, have multiplied its

numbers almost beyond the power of figures to express. I will explain

what I mean. What constitutes the population of a land? Merely the

numberable packages of meat and bones in it called by courtesy men and

101

The American Claimant