The factors most immediately and importantly to be credited with all these advances were the improvements in the steam engine, the electric telegraph, and the manufacture of steel; also the invention of the dynamo-electric machine, the electric light and the telephone. These factors had given such power and certainty and speed to the Machine of Civilization that the nations which joined it and became contributory parts of it, advanced rapidly in prosperity and wealth, both actually and also relatively, as compared with nations that did not. In the year 1900, the great nations of the world were Great Britain, France, Germany, the United States and Japan. Of these Japan had advanced the most in civilization during the preceding half century, then the United States, then Germany, then Great Britain, and then France. The nation that had increased the most in territorial extent was Great Britain. In 1900, the British Empire, including India, covered about one-fourth of the whole surface of the earth. It comprised, besides Great Britain and Ireland, five self-governing colonies, the Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Union of South Africa, New Foundland and New Zealand, in addition to the 1,800,000 square miles of British India and her three hundred million people. France had "expanded" in both Africa and Asia; that is, she had conquered territory in those partially civilized continents. Germany had done similarly; and Russia had subjugated the nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes of Central Asia. The United States had taken only a little territory, that included in the Philippines and Porto Rico; for she had expanded her constructive energy and skill in developing the vast and fertile area within her own boundaries. Japan had expanded only slightly in actual territory; the exercise of her constructive talents being urgently required at home. It may be declared that invention should not be credited with any of this expansion, for the reasons that to increase one's possessions is an instinct of human nature, and that the colonization of savage and barbarous lands has been a favorite activity with great nations always. True: but the inventions enumerated in this book, and the agencies which they supplied for going quickly, surely and safely to places far away; of taking to those places certain tools of conquest, such as guns and powder; and of supplying afterward to the conquered people finer conveniences of living, juster laws and better government of every kind, have been the effective means to an end that could not have been attained without them.