may see in the old London docks the crane-heads covered by structures
that look like paddle-boxes. If you go to them, there is, I am glad to
say, nothing now to fill them up; but when the British Association
first met, these paddle-boxes covered large tread-wheels, in which men
trod, so as to raise a weight. Now, although I know that in fact there
is nothing more objectionable in a man turning a wheel by treading
inside of it than there is if he turn it round by a winch-handle, yet
somehow it strikes one more as being merely the work of an animal, a
turnspit, or a squirrel, or, indeed, as the task imposed on the
criminal. But, nevertheless, in this way there were a large number of
persons getting their living by the mere exercise of their muscles,
but, as might be expected, a very poor living, derived as it was from
unintelligent labor. That work is no longer possible, and is not so,
for the powerful reason that it does not pay. Those persons,
therefore, who would now have been thus occupied, are compelled to
elevate themselves, and to become competent to earn their living in a
manner which is more worthy of an intelligent human being. It is on
these grounds that I say we owe very much the elevation of the working
classes, especially of the class below the artisan, to this invention
of our distinguished president.


ELECTRIC TRANSMISSION OF POWER.

In addition to the modes of transmission I have already mentioned,
there is the transmission of power by means of gas. I think that there
is a very large future indeed for gas engines. I do not know whether
this may be the place to state it, but I believe the way in which we
shall utilize our fuel hereafter will, in all probability, not be by
the way of the steam-engine. Sir William Armstrong alluded to this