This was not all. Great Britain was in a large measure, the producer for mankind. Manufacturing enterprise and industry had grown immensely on her soil, and countless factories, forges and other workshops turned out finished goods with a speed and profusion undreamed of before. The preceding century had been one of active invention, its vital product being the steam engine, that wonder-worker which at a touch was to overturn the old individual labor system of the world, and replace it with the congregate, factory system that has revolutionized the industries of mankind. The steam engine stimulated invention extraordinarily. Machines for spinning, weaving, iron-making, and a thousand other purposes came rapidly into use, and by their aid one of the greatest steps of progress in the history of mankind took place, the grand nineteenth century revolution in methods of production. [=Commercial Enterprise=] Great Britain did not content herself with going abroad for the materials of her active industries. She dug her way into the bowels of the earth, tore from the rocks its treasures of coal and iron, and thus obtained the necessary fuel for her furnaces and metal for her machines. The whole island resounded with the ringing of hammers and rattle of wheels, goods were produced very far beyond the capacity of the island for their consumption, and the vast surplus was sent abroad to all quarters of the earth, to clothe savages in far-off regions and to furnish articles of use and luxury to the most enlightened of the nations. To the ship as a carrier was soon added the locomotive and its cars, conveying these products inland with unprecedented speed from a thousand ports. And from America came the parallel discovery of the steamship, signalling the close of the long centuries of dominion of the sail. Years went on and still the power and prestige of Great Britain grew, still its industry and commerce spread and expanded, still its colonies increased in population and new lands were added to the sum, until the island-empire stood foremost in industry and enterprise among the nations of the world, and its people reached the summit of their prosperity. From this lofty elevation was to come, in the later years of the century, a slow but inevitable decline, as the United States and the leading European nations developed in industry, and rivals to the productive and commercial supremacy of the British islanders began to arise in various quarters of the earth. [=Disastrous Effect on the People of the New Conditions=]