In other words, referring to the first half of the sixteenth century,--the sixty years, we will say, following the land-fall of Columbus,--the historian attributed the great change which then occurred and which stands forth so markedly in history, to the increased New-World production of the precious metals, combined with the impetus given to trade and industry as a consequence of that discovery, and of the mastery of man over additional globe areas. Now, dismissing from consideration the so-called American protective system, likewise our currency issues and, generally, the patchwork, so to speak, of crazy-quilt legislation to which so much is attributed during the last thirty years, I confidently submit that in the production of the results under discussion, they are quantities and factors hardly worthy of consideration. The cause of the change which has taken place lies far deeper and must be sought in influences of a wholly different nature, influences developed into an increased and still ever increasing activity, over which legislation has absolutely no control. I refer, of course, to man's mastery over the latent forces of Nature. Of these Steam and Electricity are the great examples, which, because always apparent, at once strike the imagination. These, as tools, it is to be remembered, date practically from within one hundred years back. It may, indeed, safely be asserted that up to 1815, the end of the Wars of Napoleon and the time of your Professor Lieber, steam even had not as yet practically affected the operations of man, while electricity, when not a terror, was as yet but a toy. Commerce was still exclusively carried on by the sailing ship and canal-boat. The years from the fall of Napoleon to our own War of Secession--from Waterloo to Gettysburg--were practically those of early and partial development. Not until well after Appomattox, that is, since the year 1870,--a period covering but little more than the life of a generation,--did what is known to you here as the Applied Sciences cover a range difficult to specialize. As factors in development, it is safe to say that those three tremendous agencies--Steam, Electricity, Chemistry--have, so to speak, worked all their noticeable results within the lifetime of the generation born since we celebrated the Centennial of Independence. The manifestations now resulting and apparent to all are the natural outcome of the use of these modern appliances, become in our case everyday working tools in the hands of the most resourceful, adaptive, ingenious and energetic of communities, developing a virgin continent of undreamed-of wealth. Naturally, under such conditions, the advance has been not only general and continuous, but one of ever increasing celerity. So Protection and the Currency become flies on the fast revolving wheel!