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118 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. vii (1925)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0118 and id is 1 raw text is: INTRODUCTION' By GIFFORD PINCHOT Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania MECHANICAL energy is the heart of modern civilization. It was the lack of mechanical energy-power-that kept men back so long in their struggle for control over the elements. It was the lack of it in large amounts which so long delayed the coming of the degree of safety and comfort which is now char- acteristic of human life in America. We owe the present American standard of living mainly to our use of greater quantities of power per inhabitant than any other people on earth. From the very earliest times until about one hundred years ago the work of the world was done either by human muscle, by animal muscle, by the pres- sure of the wind, or by the weight of falling water. When the earliest Pha- raohs ruled in Egypt, when Homer sang of the siege of Troy, when the first Christmas dawned to bless the earth, when Columbus discovered a new con- tinent, when William Penn taught brotherhood in a new world, when Franklin laid the foundation for modern electrical development, when the Dec- laration of Independence was signed, men were still using the same four sources of mechanical power, and had never gone beyond them. This limitation of available power circumscribed human activity and held back human progress to a degree we of today find it difficult to understand. I Governor Pinchot in his message to the Gen- eral Assembly of the Commonwealth of Penn- sylvania on February 17, 1925, presented so effectively the possibilities of Giant Power and the need for its guidance for the public use that we reprint here, with his permission, part of that message with slight modifications as the Intro- duction to this volume.-THE EDITOR. If the ancients of the old world and the fathers of the new, hampered as they were by the lack of power, still did great things, they did them at a cost in time and in sheer toil which we find it hard even to imagine. THE DISCOVERY OF STEAM Upon a world so limited came the discovery of the power of steam. Steam altered the whole face of the earth for its inhabitants. By the crea- tion of a new industrial civilization it utterly changed the conditions of hu- man life. For the first time in history goods could be produced in abundance for all mankind. For the first time in history this abundance could be carried cheaply to all mankind. Steam forced the replacement of individual effort and home industry by industrial organiza- tion, for the new steam engine was too big, too expensive, and too complicated to be used except by large numbers of workmen under skilled supervision. Out of steam grew the industrial order and the material civilization of the world today. What the discovery of steam brought with it was nothing less than a revolu- tion. Because its revolutionary char- acter was not foreseen and provided for, the discovery of steam was followed by generations of fighting on the part of capital to keep, on the part of labor and agriculture to secure, a share in the rewards of greater production. That struggle for economic independence and equality of opportunity is far from set- tled today. It has produced results of enormous value to humanity, but at enormous and unnecessary cost. vii

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