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!

But what has otherwise resulted?--An unrest, social, economical,
political. Not contentment, but a lamentation and an ancient tale of
wrong! We hear it in the continual cry over what is known as the
increased cost of living, and feel its pressure in the higher standard
of living. What was considered wealth by our ancestors is to-day hardly
competence. What sufficed for luxury in our childhood barely now
supplies what are known as the comforts of life. Take, for instance, the
motor,--the automobile. I speak within bounds, I think, when I say there
are many fold more motors to-day racing over the streets, the highways
and the byways of America than there were one-horse wagons thirty-five
years ago. Six hundred, I am told, are to be found within the immediate
neighborhood of Columbia; and, since I have been here I have seen in
your streets just one man on horse-back! These figures and that
statement tell the tale. A few years only back, every Carolinian rode