e more comfortable and convenient. The
invention of the steam engine and the development of our steel products
were the two great factors that made our American railroads possible.
With the trans-continental roads to carry materials and the opening up
of our coal, iron and copper mines we were at last in a position to make
our railroads successful. Then science began to evolve wonderful
labor-saving machinery which did away with the slow, primitive methods
our pioneer engineers had been obliged to employ. The steam shovel was
invented, the traveling crane, the gigantic derrick, the pile driver.
The early railroad builders had few if any of these devices and were
forced to do by hand the work that machinery could have performed in
much less time. When one thinks back it is pathetic to consider the
number of lives that were sacrificed which under present-day conditions
might have been saved. Yet every great movement goes forward over the
dead bodies of unnamed heroes. To an extent this is unavoidable and one
of the enigmas of life. If every generation were as wise at the
beginning as it is at the end there would be no progress. Nevertheless,
when you reflect that ten thousand Chinese and Chilean laborers died
while building one of the South American railroads it does make us
wonder why we should be the ones to reap the benefits of so much that
others sowed, doesn't it?" mused the boy's father.

"Do you mean to say that ten thousand persons were killed while that
railroad was being built?" questioned Stephen, aghast.

"They were not all killed," was the reply. "Many of them died of
exposure to cold, and many from the effects of the climate. Epidemics
swept away hundreds of lives. This particular railroad was one of the
mightiest engineering feats the world had seen for in its path lay the
Andes Mountains, and there was no escape from either crossing or
tunneling them. The great tunnel that pierces them at a height of 15,645
feet above sea level is one of the marvels of science. In various parts
of the world there are other such monuments to man's conquest of the
opposing forces of nature. Honeycombing the Alps are spiral tunnels that
curve round and round like corkscrews inside the mountains, rising
slowly to the peaks and making it possible to reach the heights that
must be traversed. Among these marvels is the Simplon Tunnel, famous the
world over. The road that crosses the Semmering Pass from Trieste to
Vienna is anoth