The growth of steam navigation during the present generation has been wonderfully rapid. The accompanying diagram, Fig. 121, from Mulhall’s “Industries and Wealth of Nations,” shows in 1860 30 per cent. of steam to 70 per cent. of sailing vessels, while in 1894 the ratio is 80 per cent. of steam to 20 of sailing vessels. The same authority estimated the total horse power of steam vessels in the merchant marine of the world in 1895 to be 12,005,000. Add to this the growth of the past five years, and about 4,000,000 horse power for the steam war vessels of the world’s navies, which were not included, and the total horse power of the steam vessels of the world would not be far from twenty million. This cursory review, in a single chapter, cannot adequately treat this great subject, for a whole library is needed to cover the field. Suffice it to say, however, that among the great scenes and acts in the theatre of human action, no figure has occupied so much attention, and none played so important a part in the drama of life, as the steam vessel. Its stage setting has been the majestic waters of the earth, and on it the play of the great warships has vied in power and grandeur with the flash and vehemence of the lightning, and the whirl and turmoil of the elements. Tense with a deep meaning which no stage simulation could approximate, and with the smoke of conflict for a drop curtain, it has laid tragedies upon the pages of history, and changed the maps of the world; while behind the scenes the great passenger steamers, with their uninterrupted traffic of human freight, are more silently, but none the less surely, stirring the peoples of the earth into the homogeneous ferment of civilization, and slowly moulding nations into the solidarity of a common brotherhood. CHAPTER XIII. PRINTING. EARLY PRINTING PRESSES--NICHOLSON’S ROTARY PRESS--THE COLUMBIAN AND WASHINGTON PRESSES--KÖNIG ROTARY STEAM PRESS--THE HOE TYPE REVOLVING MACHINE--COLOR PRINTING--STEREOTYPING--PAPER MAKING--WOOD PULP--THE LINOTYPE--PLATE PRINTING--LITHOGRAPHY. The art preservative of all arts it has been rightfully called. Before its birth generation after generation of the human family lived and died, and each was but little wiser, and but little better than its predecessor. Tradition was the misty, vague, and sometimes wholly false dependence of the living, and the experiences of mankind were, in the words of an eminent writer, but like the stern lights of a vessel, which only illumined the pathway over which each had passed. But printing gives to the present the cumulative wisdom of the past, and marks a great era of growth in civilization. It conserves and preserves man’s thoughts and makes them immortal, so that each generation comes into existence with a richer legacy of ideas, and is guaranteed a higher plane of existence, and a more exalted destiny.