ents of the present and the past age could
be placed in comparison with the attempts, the struggles, to
accomplish what has now been achieved, the list of failures would
far outnumber that of successes. Many of those who have rendered
priceless blessings to their own and after generations by the
production of wonderful machines or methods from the fine fibre of
their brains, were plundered and buffeted, even in the midst of
their grand successes, to such a degree that it requires a lofty
comprehension to determine whether their lives were triumphs or
defeats. Sometimes the failure of one generation becomes the success
of the next.

Born the same year that gave Robert Fulton to the world was Eli
Whitney, who really made "cotton king," so that the great staple of
the South yielded millions upon millions of dollars to the planters;
but he might have died a beggar, so far as his marvellous invention
affected his fortunes. Before he had fully completed his machine for
separating the seeds from the cotton, which only two persons had
been permitted to see, his workshop was broken open, and it was
stolen. His idea was incorporated in other machines before he had
obtained his patent, though it was only his own that transmuted
cotton into gold. False reports, the repudiation of contracts for
royalties fairly made, the refusal of Congress, through Southern
influence, to renew his patent, constant litigation to protect his
rights, harassed his life, and robbed him of the pecuniary results
of his success. Defeated, he gave up the battle, devoted his
attention to the manufacture of firearms, and finally made a fortune
in this business. Fulton's experience was not very different.

On the other hand, important discoveries in methods and mechanical
appliances have been made by accident, as it were, and fortunes
accrued from very little labor or study; but these are the
exceptions rather than the rule.

It would be difficult to estimate the influence upon the prosperity
of the United States of steam-navigation. It came but a few years
after the organization of the Federal Government, when the greater
portion of the territorial extent of the country was a wilderness,
and preceded the general use of railroads by a quarter of a century.
Transportation on the inland waters of the nation was slow,
difficult, and expensive, and the introduction of the steamboat upon
its great lakes and rivers, notably upon the latter, was a new era
in its