amount of the earth's elastic yielding to tricity is to convey all the delicacies of the distorting influence of the sun and quality which distinguish articulate speech, moon will be measured; and of my strong the strength of its current must vary conhope that the Compass Department of the tinuously, and, as nearly as may be, in American navy will repay the debt to simple proportion to the velocity of a parFrance, England, and Germany so appre- ticle of air engaged in constituting the ciatively acknowledged in their reprint of sound! The Patent Museum of Washthe works of Poisson, Airy, Archibald ington, an institution of which the nation Smith, Evans, and the Liverpool Compass is justly proud, and the beneficent workCommittee, by giving in return a fresh ing of the United States patent laws, demarine survey of terrestrial magnetism, to serve notice in the section of the British supply the navigator with data for correct- Association concerned with branches of ing his compass without sights of sun or science to which nine-tenths of all the usestars. In the United States telegraphic ful patents of the world owe their foundadepartment I saw and heard Elisha Gray's tions. I was much struck with the preva splendidly worked out electric telephone lence of patented inventions in the Exhibiactually sounding four messages simul- tion; it seemed to me that every good taneously on the Morse code, and clearly thing deserving a patent was patented. I capable of doing yet four times as many asked one inventor of a very good invenwith very moderate improvements of de- tion,-" Why don't you patent it in Entail; and I saw Edison's automatic tele- gland?" He answered, - "The condigraph delivering 1,015 words in fifty-seven tions in England are too onerous." We seconds; this done by the long-neglected certainly are far behind America's wisdom electro-chemical method of Bain, long ago in this respect. If Europe does not condemned in England to the helot work amend its patent laws (England in the of recording from a relay, and then turned opposite direction to that proposed in the adrift as needlessly delicate for that. In bills before the last two sessions of Parthe Canadian department I heard "To be liament), America will speedily become or not to be . . . there's the rub," through the nursery of useful inventions for the an electric wire; but, scorning monosylla- world. I should tell you also of "Old bles, the electric articulation rose to higher | Prob's” weather warnings, which cost the flights, and gave me passages taken at random from the New York newspapers: -"S.S. Cox has arrived" (I failed to make out the s.s. Cox); "The City of New York," "Senator Morton," "The senate has resolved to print a thousand extra copies," "The Americans in London have resolved to celebrate the coming fourth of July." All this my own ears heard spoken to me with unmistakable distinctness by the thin circular disc armature of just such another little electromagnet as this which I hold in my hand. The words were shouted with a clear and loud voice by my colleague-judge, Prof. Watson, at the far end of the line, holding his mouth close to a stretched membrane, such as you see before you here, carrying a little piece of soft iron, which was thus made to perform in the neighborhood of an electro-magnet in circuit with the line motions proportional to the sonorific motions of the air. This, the greatest by far of all the marvels of the electric telegraph, is due to a young countryman of our own, Mr. Graham Bell of Edinburgh, and Montreal, and Boston, now a naturalized citizen of the United States. Who can but admire the hardihood of invention which devised such very slight means to realize the mathematical conception that, if elec

nation $250,000 a year. Money well spent, say the Western farmers, and not they alone. In this the whole people of the United States are agreed, and though Democrats or Republicans, playing the "economical ticket," may for half a session stop the appropriations for even the United States Coast Survey, no one would for a moment think of starving "Old Prob;" and now that eighty per cent. of his probabilities have proved true, and General Myers has for a month back ceased to call his daily forecasts "probabilities," and has begun to call them indications, what will the Western farmers call him this time next year? But the stimulus of intercourse with American scientific men left no place in my mind for framing or attempting to frame a report on American science. Disturbed by Newcomb's suspicions of the earth's irregularities as a timekeeper, I could think of nothing but precession and nutation, and tides and monsoons, and settlements of the equatorial regions and melting of polar ice. Week after week passed before I could put down two words which I would read to you here to-day, and so I have nothing to offer for my address but a review of evidence regarding the physical conditions of the earth; its internal temperature; the

From The Economist. PROTECTION IN THE UNITED STATES.

fluidity or solidity of its interior sub-| stance; the rigidity, elasticity, plasticity of its external figure; and the permanence or A PROLONGED and rather unprofitable variability of its period and axis of rotation. controversy has been carried on in the As a result of this review, he found Times as to the limits to which protection that certain reasonings which he had pub- in the United States is likely to be carried, lished regarding precession and nutation and the probable consequences, in the in a rigid shell filled with liquid were long run, of the system which the manuwrong. He had now worked out the prob- facturers of America have built up. Caplem rigorously, for the case of a homo- tain Galton, who has lately been visiting geneous liquid enclosed in an ellipsoidal the Philadelphia Exhibition, was greatly shell; and had obtained results, which impressed with the astonishing results were absolutely decisive against the geo- there displayed of the progress of the logical hypothesis of a thin rigid shell, full manufacturing industries of the Union of liquid. But interesting in a dynamical within the past twenty years. It is stated point of view as this problem of Hop- by Captain Galton, and confirmed by other kins's is, it cannot afford a decisive argu- witnesses, that the advance upon what was ment against the earth's interior liquidity. possible before the Republican party came It assumes the crust to be perfectly stiff into power, and protection was accepted and unyielding in its figure, and this of as the official doctrine of the American course it cannot be, because no material is government, is almost beyond belief. It infinitely rigid. But may it not be stiff is certain that at Philadelphia the repreenough to practically fulfil the condition sentation of American industry outshone of unyieldingness? No, decidedly it can- the inadequate exhibition of English and not. On the contrary, were it of continu- other European manufactures, and it is ous steel and five hundred kilomètres probably true that the mechanical genius thick, it would yield very nearly as much and the commercial instincts of the Ameras a solid globe of indian-rubber, to the ican people, working in combination, have deforming influences of centrifugal force actually approached, and threaten to equal, and of the sun's and moon's attractions. the most admirable industrial efforts of The supposition of a crust of such thick- the Old World. Captain Galton goes so ness as would be consistent with the far as to assert that British manufacturers actual amounts of precession and nutation, have hopelessly lost their hold upon the with a liquid interior, is disproved by ob- markets of the United States. Other servations of the tides, which show that observers go further, and picture the disthere is no such flexibility in the shell as astrous consequences of the removal of this supposition would require. The in-protective duties in America, which will vestigations of Adams and Dalaunay had shown that there was an apparent acceleration of the moon's mean motion, possibly due to a real retardation of the earth's rotation by tidal friction. Newcomb's subsequent investigations in the lunar theory have, on the whole, tended to confirm this result; but they have also brought to light some remarkable apparent irregularities in the moon's motion, which he believes to be really due to irregularities in the earth's rotational velocity. If this is the true explanation, it seems that the earth was going slow from 1850 to 1862, so much as to have got behind by seven seconds in these twelve years, and then to have begun going faster again, so as to gain eight seconds from 1862 to 1872. So great an irregularity as this would require somewhat greater changes of sea-level, but not very much greater, than the British Association committee's reductions of tidal observations for several places in different parts of the world allow us to admit to have possibly taken place.

bring American manufactures into ruinous
competition with us, we are told, in the
open markets of the rest of the world.
We think that all these apprehensions are
either absolutely unfounded or grossly ex-
aggerated. They point to an unsteadiness
of conviction in the minds of the indus-
trial classes in England, which would be
dangerous were there ever to be-which
is quite possible—a foolish democratic
outcry among the English working-classes.
Such fears may possibly do some good by
making our manufacturers perceive the
truth - already sufficiently obvious
the industrial supremacy of this country
cannot be preserved without continual
efforts to improve the quality and cheapen
the cost of manufactured articles; but
they are much more likely to do mischief
by suggesting impracticable or ultimately
ruinous remedies.

that

What is the actual state of the case in the United States? American industries have vastly improved in the character of their products, and as this improvement

has gone on under a protective system, | Why, then, should he not compete abroad those products have, by degrees, forced as well as at home? Why should not themselves upon the American markets to American manufacturers challenge the the exclusion of European commodities. supremacy of English in the markets of Protection made the latter artificially dear, continental Europe, of the East, and even and as in time the American manufacturer of our own colonies? This prospect, it is began to produce something which could said, is tempting the American manufac fairly stand comparison with the European, turers to the side of free-trade. They and which, though costly also, was not so find that the tariff which doubtfully pro costly as the European article, weighted tects them at home, for prices artificially with the duty, had become, the state of raised are devoured by competition and things came about on which Captain Gal- over-production, prevents them from enter. ton looks with admiring amazement, and ing into anything like equal rivalry with the representatives of some English indus- England abroad. This conviction, accordtries with undisguised dismay. But what ing to some shrewd observers, has given has been the result to the American man- the death-blow to protection,. and freeufacturers themselves? They may com- trade will soon, we are told, be the acceptmand their own home markets, but they ed policy of the American government. do so at something approaching to an Then we shall find that America will step absolute loss. Protection has been fol- forward as a formidable competitor in lowed by excess of competition and by every foreign market, and if we do not over-production, almost unparalleled, it is take care we shall find it hard to hold our said, in the history of trade. To this is own. attributed the present prostration of the By all means let us take care, but, in leading American industries. This would truth, if we cannot hold our own in the not seem to furnish any very striking ar- conditions stated, we deserve to be beaten. guments in favor of the protective system; The course of events indicated is preciseBut the fears of the manufacturers, who ly what we have always contended the write in doleful language to the Times, use question of the tariff in the United States the very failure of the system as a proof would develop. There, as elsewhere, we that having done the maximum of mischief felt certain that the over-impatience of to English industry in one way, the policy consumers against high prices would never of the United States will now be turned make free-trade a political question of about, and will do us equal or greater the first order; but that when the produinjury in the opposite direction. It is cers themselves began to feel the system argued that the American manufacturer, pinch them the solution would soon be unsuccessful as he has been in making reached. If it should be, we have no large profits of late years, has succeeded fear of the industrial pre-eminence of Enat any rate, in doing two things-in beat- gland. Granting that the Americans have ing England and Europe out of the Amer-made progress astonishingly in the last ican markets, and in placing American twenty years, we have the traditions and manufacturers, at least, on a level in point of excellence with those of Europe. The latter fact, we are assured, will be proclaimed to the world by the Philadelphia Exhibition, and the world will be ready to receive the information eagerly. But the American manufacturers, already able to lower their prices by the diminution in the rate of wages, will be stiil more relieved by the operation of the late crisis, which has transferred factories and machinery into new hands at a comparatively trifling cost. The manufacturer who has come into possession of his buildings and plant at one-fourth of the original outlay, and who pays workmen forty per cent. less than he would have been obliged to pay them four years ago, is plainly so much the better able to enter into competition on the ground of cheapness as well as of quality.ence.

the habits of a period ten times as long, and our national energies have not assuredly lost their elasticity and adaptive power. It is absurd to suppose that the present "shrinkage" in the value of American factories and machinery can be taken as a permanent element in the competition between the manufacturers of the United States and those of the Old World, and still less justifiable is it to count upon the recent fall in wages as a lasting deduction from the burdens on American industry. As yet the Americans have never been able to stand up before us in the open field of competition, and the conclusion that they will be able to do so, because under protection they have improved production and got the command of their own markets, is a wholly illegitimate infer

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