Chapter LXI: Section 88 (10)

Controversy as to whether the Nineteenth Century came to its
end at the ending of the year 1899 or the year 1900 seems
nearly incomprehensible to one who takes the trouble to begin
a counting of years from the beginning of the Christian Era,
and so reaches in his reckoning the fact that the first
century did not end until the 100th year was ended. That seems
to clear all confusion from the question, since the 200th,
300th, 400th, and so on up to the 1900th, must be the closing
years of the successive centuries, just as certainly as the
100th is the last year of the first century. Arithmetically,
there is no question left; but some minds refuse to recognize
the century as a merely arithmetical fact. They see in it an
entity of time with which the counting of years has little to
do. Their somewhat mystical view is set forth in the
following, which we quote from a communication that appeared
in the "New York Times":

"The centurial figures are the symbol, and the only symbol, of
the centuries. Once every hundred years there is a change in
the symbol, and this great secular event is of startling
prominence. What more natural than to bring the century into
harmony with its only visible mark? What more consonant with
order than to make each group of a hundred years correspond
with a single centennial emblem? Be it noticed that, apart
from the centennial emblems, there is absolutely nothing to
give the centuries any form. The initial figures 18 are time's
standard which the earth carries while it makes 100 trips around
the sun. Then a new standard, 19, is put up. Shall we wait now
a whole year for 1901, at the behest of the abacists? No, we
will not pass over the significant year 1900, which is stamped
with the great secular change, but with cheers we will welcome
it and the new century. The 1900 men, who compose the vast
majority of the people, say to their opponents: 'We freely
admit that the century you have in your mind, the artificial
century, begins in 1901, but the natural century (which we
prefer) begins in 1900.'"

{337}

A consistent application of this view to the defining and
naming of the centuries would seem to require that the years
which carry the initial figures 18 should make up the
Eighteenth, not the Nineteenth Century, and that we should
turn back our centurial nomenclature a whole round.

NINETEENTH CENTURY:
The epoch of a transformation of the world.

In the last years of the Eighteenth Century a new epoch in
history was entered,—an epoch marked by many distinctions, but
most strikingly by what may be called the transformation of
the world. The earlier great ages had been ages of simple
expansion,—of a widening theatre for the leading races,—of a
widening knowledge of the earth and the heavens,—of a widening
range for human thought; but those expansive movements in
civilization led up, at last, to more wonderful processes of
transformation, which were just in their beginning when the
Nineteenth Century dawned. For all the generations of mankind
that had lived before this century, the earth, as a dwelling
place, remained nearly unchanged. They had cleared some
forests from its face, and smoothed some paths; but, in every
substantial feature, the France, for example, of Napoleon was
the unaltered Gaul that Julius Cæsar knew. Everywhere the
material conditions of life were essentially the same for the
man of the Eighteenth Century that they had been for the man
of the First. Then began the amazing work of the brain and
hand of man, by which he has been refashioning and refitting
the planet he inhabits, and making a new world for his
dwelling. As a habitable earth, to-day, it bears no likeness
to the earth on which the first day of this century dawned.
Its distances mean nothing that they formerly did; its
dividing seas and mountains have nothing of their old effect;
its pestilences have lost half their terror; its very storms
are sentinelled and rarely surprise us in our travels or our
work. Netted with steam and electric railways, seamed with
canals, wire-strung with telegraphic and telephonic lines, its
ocean-voyages made holiday excursions, its every-day labors,
of the forge, the plough, the sickle, the spindle, the loom,
the needle, and even of the pen, done with magical deftness by
machines, which its coal mines and its waterfalls lend forces
to move, it is nothing less than a new world that men are
making for themselves, out of that in which they lived at the
beginning of the era of mechanism and electricity and steam.

"Yet these are but outward features of the transformation that
is being wrought in the world. Socially, politically, and
morally, it has been undergoing a deeper change. A growth of
fellow-feeling which began in the last century has been an
increasing growth. It has not ended war, nor the passions that
cause war, but it is rousing an opposition which gathers
strength every year. It has made democratic institutions of
government so common that the few arbitrary governments now
remaining in civilized countries seem disgraceful to the
people who endure them so long. It has broken old yokes of
conquest, and revived the independence of long subjugated
states. It has swept away unnatural boundary lines, which
separated peoples of kindred language and race. It is pressing
long-neglected questions of right and justice on the attention
of an classes of men, everywhere, and requiring that answers
shall be found.

"And, still, even these are but minor effects of the
prodigious change which the Nineteenth Century has brought
into the experience of mankind." Beyond them all in importance
are the new conceptions of the universe, and of the method of
God's working in it, which can, with no exaggeration, be said
to have imparted a wholly new spirit and quality to the human
mind. By what it learned from Copernicus, it was given a new
standpoint in thinking. By what it learned from Newton, it was
given a new and larger grasp. By what it has learned from
Darwin and Spencer it has been equipped with a new insight,
and looks at even the mystery of life as a problem to be
solved. "If we live in a world that is different from that
which our ancestors knew, it is still more the fact that we
think of a different universe, and feel differently in all our
relations to it."

_J. N. Larned,
History of England for the Use of Schools,
page 561._

NINETEENTH CENTURY:
Comparison of the Century with all preceding ages,
as regards man's power over Nature.

"No one, so far as I am aware, has yet pointed out the
altogether exceptional character of our advance in science and
the arts, during the century which is now so near its close.
In order to estimate its full importance and grandeur—more
especially as regards man's increased power over nature, and
the application of that power to the needs of his life to-day,
with unlimited possibilities in the future—we must compare it,
not with any preceding century, or even with the last
millennium, but with the whole historical period,—perhaps even
with the whole period that has elapsed since the stone age."

Such a comparison is made in the following lists of "the great
inventions and discoveries of the two eras":

"Of the Nineteenth Century."
1. Rail ways.
2. Steam-ships.
3. Electric Telegraphs.
4. The Telephone.
5. Lucifer Matches.
6. Gas illumination.
7. Electric lighting.
8. Photography.
9. The Phonograph.
10. Röntgen Rays.
11. Spectrum-analysis.
12. Anæsthetics.
13. Antiseptic Surgery.
14. Conservation of energy.
15. Molecular theory of Gases.
16. Velocity of Light directly measured
and Earth's Rotation experimentally shown.
17. The uses of Dust.
18. Chemistry, definite proportions.
19. Meteors and the Meteoritic Theory.
20. The Glacial Epoch.
21. The Antiquity of Man.
22. Organic Evolution established.
23. Cell theory and Embryology.
24. Germ theory of disease and
the function of the Leucocytes.

"Of all Preceding Ages."
1. The Mariner's Compass.
2. The Steam Engine.
3. The Telescope.
4. The Barometer and Thermometer.
5. Printing.
6. Arabic numerals.
7. Alphabetical writing.
8. Modern Chemistry founded.
9. Electric science founded.
10. Gravitation established.
11. Kepler's Laws.
12. The Differential Calculus.
13. The circulation of the blood.
14. Light proved to have finite velocity.
15. The development of Geometry.

{338}

"Of course these numbers are not absolute. Either series may
be increased or diminished by taking account of other
discoveries as of equal importance, or by striking out some
which may be considered as below the grade of an important or
epoch-making step in science or civilization. But the
difference between the two lists is so large, that probably no
competent judge would bring them to an equality. Again, it is
noteworthy that nothing like a regular gradation is
perceptible during the last three or four centuries. The
eighteenth century, instead of showing some approximation to
the wealth of discovery in our own age, is less remarkable
than the seventeenth, having only about half the number of
really great advances."

_A. R. Wallace,
The Wonderful Century,
chapter 15
(copyright, Dodd, Mead & Company, New York,
quoted with permission)._

NINETEENTH CENTURY:
Difference of the Century from preceding ages.

"In the last 100 years the world has seen great wars, great
national and social upheavals, great religious movements,
great economic changes. Literature and art have had their
triumphs and have permanently enriched the intellectual
inheritance of our race. Yet, large as is the space which
subjects like these legitimately fill in our thoughts, much as
they will occupy the future historian, it is not among these
that I seek for the most important and the most fundamental
differences which separate the present from preceding ages.
Rather is this to be found in the cumulative products of
scientific research, to which no other period offers a
precedent or a parallel. No single discovery, it may be, can
be compared in its results to that of Copernicus; no single
discoverer can be compared in genius to Newton; but, in their
total effects, the advances made by the 19th century are not
to be matched. Not only is the surprising increase of
knowledge new, but the use to which it has been put is new
also. The growth of industrial invention is not a fact we are
permitted to forget. We do, however, sometimes forget how much
of it is due to a close connection between theoretic knowledge
and its utilitarian application which, in its degree, is
altogether unexampled in the history of mankind. I suppose
that, at this moment, if we were allowed a vision of the
embryonic forces which are predestined most potently to affect
the future of mankind, we should have to look for them not in
the Legislature, nor in the Press, nor on the platform, nor in
the schemes of practical statesmen, nor the dreams of
political theorists, but in the laboratories of scientific
students whose names are but little in the mouths of men, who
cannot themselves forecast the results of their own labors,
and whose theories could scarcely be understood by those whom
they will chiefly benefit. …

"Marvellous as is the variety and ingenuity of modern
industrial methods, they almost all depend in the last resort
upon our supply of useful power; and our supply of useful
power is principally provided for us by methods which, so far
as I can see, have altered not at all in principle, and
strangely little in detail, since the days of Watt. Coal, as
we all know, is the chief reservoir of energy from which the
world at present draws, and from which we in this country must
always draw; but our main contrivance for utilizing it is the
steam engine, and, by its essential nature, the steam engine
is extravagantly wasteful. So that, when we are told, as if it
was something to be proud of, that this is the age of steam,
we may admit the fact, but can hardly share the satisfaction.
… We have, in truth, been little better than brilliant
spendthrifts. Every new invention seems to throw a new strain
upon the vast but not illimitable, resources of nature. Lord
Kelvin is disquieted about our supply of oxygen; Sir William
Crookes about our supply of nitrates. The problem of our coal
supply is always with us. Sooner or later the stored-up
resources of the world will be exhausted. Humanity, having
used or squandered its capital, will thenceforth have to
depend upon such current income as can be derived from that
diurnal heat of the sun and the rotation of the earth till, in
the sequence of the ages, these also begin to fail. …

"After all, however, it is not necessarily the material and
obvious results of scientific discoveries which are of the
deepest interest. They have affected changes more subtle and
perhaps less obvious which are at least as worthy of our
consideration and are at least as unique in the history of the
civilized world. No century has seen so great a change in our
intellectual apprehension of the world in which we live. Our
whole point of view has changed. The mental framework in which
we arrange the separate facts in the world of men and things
is quite a new framework. The spectacle of the universe
presents itself now in a wholly changed perspective. We not
only see more, but we see differently. The discoveries in
physics and in chemistry, which have borne their share in thus
re-creating for us the evolution of the past, are in process of
giving us quite new ideas as to the inner nature of that
material whole of which the world's traversing space is but an
insignificant part. Differences of quality once thought ultimate
are constantly being resolved into differences of motion or
configuration. What were once regarded as things are now known
to be movement. … Plausible attempts have been made to reduce
the physical universe, with its infinite variety, its glory of
color and of form, its significance and its sublimity, to one
homogeneous medium in which there are no distinctions to be
discovered but distinction of movement or of stress. And
although no such hypothesis can, I suppose, be yet accepted,
the gropings of physicists after this, or some other not less
audacious unification, must finally, I think, be crowned with
success. The change of view which I have endeavored to
indicate is purely scientific, but its consequences cannot be
confined to science. How will they manifest themselves in
other regions of human activity, in literature, in art, in
religion?"

_A. J. Balfour,
The Nineteenth Century
(Address before the University Extension Students
at Cambridge, August 2, 1900)._

NINETEENTH CENTURY:
The intellectual and social trend of the Century.

"The two influences which have made the nineteenth century
what it is seem to me to be the scientific spirit and the
democratic spirit. Thus, the nineteenth century, singularly
enough, is the great interpretative century both of nature and
of the past, and at the same time the century of incessant and
uprooting change in all that relates to the current life of
men. It is also the century of national systems of popular
education, and at the same time of nation-great armies; the
century that has done more than any other to scatter men over
the face of the earth, and to concentrate them in cities; the
century of a universal suffrage that is based upon a belief in
the inherent value of the individual; and the century of the
corporation and the labor union, which in the domain of
capital and of labor threaten to obliterate the individual. …

{339}

"The mind has been active in all fields during this fruitful
century; but, outside of politics, it is to science that we
must look for the thoughts that have shaped all other
thinking. When von Helmholtz was in this country, a few years
ago, he said that modern science was born when men ceased to
summon nature to the support of theories already formed, and
instead began to question nature for her facts, in order that
they might thus discover the laws which these facts reveal. I
do not know that it would be easy to sum up the scientific
method, as the phrase runs, in simpler words. It would not be
correct to say that this process was unknown before the
present century; for there have been individual observers and
students of nature in all ages. … But it is true that only in
this century has this attitude toward nature become the
uniform attitude of men of science. …

"One of the chief results of the scientific method as applied
to nature and the study of the past is the change that it has
wrought in the philosophic conception of nature and of human
society. By the middle of the century, Darwin had given what
has been held to be substantial proof of the theory of the
development of higher forms out of lower in all living things;
and since then, the doctrine of evolution, not as a body of
exact teaching, but as a working theory, has obtained a
mastery over the minds of men which has dominated all their
studies and all their thinking. …

"Every public educational system of our day, broadly speaking,
is the child of the nineteenth century. The educational system
of Germany, which in its results has been of hardly less value
to mankind than to Germany itself, dates from the reconstitution
of the German universities after the battle of Jena. Whatever
system France may have had before the Revolution went down in
the cataclysm that destroyed the ancient regime, so that the
educational system of France also dates from the Napoleonic
period. In the United States, while the seeds of the public
school system may have been planted in the eighteenth, or
perhaps even in the seventeenth century, it has only been in
the nineteenth century, with the development of the country,
that our public school system has grown into what we now see;
while in England, the system of national education, in a
democratic sense, must be dated from 1870. … Out of the growth
of the democratic principle has come the belief that it is
worth while to educate all the children of the state: and out
of the scientific method, which has led to the general
acceptance of the evolutionary theory, has been developed the
advance in educational method which is so marked a feature of
the last decades of the century. …

"Not only has the scientific method furnished a philosophy of
nature and of human life, but, by the great increase in man's
knowledge of natural law to which it has led, it has resulted
in endless inventions, and these, in turn, have changed the
face of the world. … The rapid progress of invention during
the century has been coincident with one far-reaching change
in the habits of society, the importance of which is seldom
recognized. I refer to deposit banking. Of all the agencies
that have effected the world in the nineteenth century, I am
sometimes inclined to think that this is one of the most
influential. If deposit banking may not be said to be the
result of democracy, it certainly may be said that it is in
those countries in which democracy is most dominant that
deposit banking thrives best. … Some one has said that it
would have been of no use to invent the railroad, the
submarine cable, or the telephone at an earlier period of the
world's history, for there would have been no money at command
to make anyone of them available before this modern banking
system had made its appearance. If this be so, then indeed the
part that has been played by deposit banking in the
developments of the century cannot be overestimated.

"During the century the conditions of the world's commerce
have been radically altered. It is not simply that the
steamboat and the locomotive have taken the place of the
sailing-ship and the horse; that the submarine cable has
supplanted the mails; nor even that these agencies have led to
such improvements in banking facilities that foreign commerce
is done, for the most part, for hardly more than a brokerage
upon the transaction. These are merely accidents of the
situation. The fundamental factors have been the opening up of
virgin soil in vast areas to the cultivation of man, and the
discovery of how to create artificial cold, which makes it
possible to transport for long distances produce that only a
few years ago was distinctly classed as perishable. The net
result of these influences has been to produce a world
competition at every point of the globe. …

"Democracy, as a political theory, emphasizes the equality of
men and the equal rights and privileges of all men before the
law. The tendency of it has been, in this country, to develop
in multitudes of men great individuality and self-reliance.
Side by side with this tendency, however, we see the
corporation supplanting the individual capitalist, and the
trade union obliterating the individual laborer, as direct
agents in the work of the world. Strange as this contrast is,
both tendencies must be consistent with democracy, for the
corporation and the trade union flourish most where democracy
is most developed. Indeed, they seem to be successful and
powerful just because democracy pours into them both its vital
strength. …

"The tendency to democracy in politics is unquestionably the
dominant political fact of the century. … Outside of Russia,
and possibly even there, monarchical government in Europe is
obliged to depend for its support upon the great body of the
nation, instead of upon the power of the great and the noble.
… In the United States, the century, though it began with a
limited suffrage, ends with universal manhood suffrage, and
even with woman suffrage in some of the Western States. …
Undoubtedly, universal suffrage and the large immigration of
people without any experience in self-government have given
form to many of our problems; but I often think there is far
too great a disposition among us to magnify the difficulties
which these conditions present. …
{340}
The fact is, in my judgment, that our problems arise not so
much from universal suffrage as from the effect of the
multiplication table applied to all the problems of life. …
Anyone building a house in the country, when he has dug a well
has solved the problem of his water supply; but to supply
water for a great city calls for the outlay of millions of
dollars, and for the employment of the best engineering talent
in the land. Yet nothing has happened except that the problem
has been magnified. Thus the difficulties created by the
multiplication table are real; so that the very enlargement of
opportunity that democracy has brought with it has faced
democracy with problems far harder than were formerly
presented to any government. …

"To sum up, therefore, I should say that the trend of the
century has been to a great increase in knowledge, which has
been found to be, as of old, the knowledge of good and evil;
that this knowledge has become more and more the property of
all men rather than of a few; that, as a result, the very
increase of opportunity has led to the magnifying of the
problems with which humanity is obliged to deal; and that we
find ourselves, at the end of the century, face to face with
problems of world-wide importance and utmost difficulty, and
with no new means of coping with them other than the patient
education of the masses of men."

_Seth Low,
The Trend of the Century
(Atlantic Monthly, August, 1898)._

NINETEENTH CENTURY:
Dominant lines in the intellectual development of the Century.

"The future historian of thought will no doubt regard the
promulgation and the rapid triumph of evolutionist doctrines
as the most remarkable phenomenon in the intellectual
development of the nineteenth century."

_Leslie Stephen,
Evolution and Religious Conceptions
(Review of the Nineteenth Century,
in New York Evening Post, January 12, 1901)._

"In the briefest sketch of what the nineteenth century has
done in literature, it is absolutely imperative to mention the
publication of 'The Origin of Species' [Darwin, 1859] and
'Principles of Psychology' [Spencer, 1855], because, although
neither work is written with an attractive elegance, each is
the starting point of an intellectual and moral revolution so
vast that every branch of life is affected by it, and
literature itself—in its lightest forms—can no longer ignore
the germinal forces with which evolution has quickened all our
emotions."

_Edmund Gosse,
A Century of English Literature
(Review of the Nineteenth Century,
in New York Evening Post, January 12, 1901)._

"To an earlier age knowledge was power, merely that and
nothing more; to us it is life and the 'summum bonum.'
Emancipation from the bonds of self, of one's own
prepossessions, importunately sought at the hands of that
rational power before which all must ultimately bow—this is
the characteristic that distinguishes all the great figures of
nineteenth century science from those of former periods."

_Professor Charles S. Peirce,
The Century's Great Men in Science
(Review of the Nineteenth Century,
in New York Evening Post, January 12, 1901)._

"The mark of the century has been a continuous attempt at a
comprehensive understanding of nature, after the manner of
Newton, but not limited or governed solely by his dynamical
ideas. … The Newtonian laws of dynamics as applied to matter
still hold, and will always hold, but they may no longer be
fundamental or ultimate, they may be derivatives from a still
deeper scheme; and it is towards this deeper scheme that
physicists at present are groping. The realization of a need
for some such scheme constitutes the chief philosophic feature
of the latter part of the century."

_Oliver J. Lodge.
The Scope and Tendencies of Physics
(Review of the Nineteenth Century,
in New York Evening Post, January 12, 1901)._

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY:
The failures of the Century.
Its sinful mismanagement of the powers which Science has
given it.

"The Nineteenth Century … has been characterised by a
marvellous and altogether unprecedented progress in knowledge
of the universe and of its complex forces; and also in the
application of that knowledge to an infinite variety of
purposes, calculated, if properly utilized, to supply all the
wants of every human being, and to add greatly to the
comforts, the enjoyments, and the refinements of life. The
bounds of human knowledge have been so far extended that new
vistas have opened to us in directions where it had been
thought that we could never penetrate, and the more we learn
the more we seem capable of learning in the ever-widening
expanse of the universe. …

"But the more we realize the vast possibilities of human
welfare which science has given us, the more we must recognise
our total failure to make any adequate rational use of them.
With ample power to supply to the fullest extent necessaries,
comforts, and even luxuries for all, and at the same time
allow ample leisure for intellectual pleasures and æsthetic
enjoyments, we have yet so sinfully mismanaged our social
economy as to give unprecedented and injurious luxury to the
few, while millions are compelled to suffer a lifelong
deficiency of the barest necessaries for a healthy existence.
Instead of devoting the highest powers of our greatest men to
remedy these evils, we see the governments of the most
advanced nations arming their people to the teeth, and
expending much of their wealth and all the resources of their
science, in preparation for the destruction of life, of
property, and of happiness.

"With ample knowledge of the sources of health, we allow, and
even compel, the bulk of our population to live and work under
conditions which greatly shorten life; while every year we see
from 50,000 to 100,000 infants done to death by our criminal
neglect. In our mad race for wealth, we have made gold more
sacred than human life; we have made life so hard for the
many, that suicide and insanity and crime are alike
increasing. With all our labour-saving machinery and all our
command over the forces of nature, the struggle for existence
has become more fierce than ever before; and year by year an
ever-increasing proportion of our people sink into paupers'
graves.

"Even more degrading, and more terrible in its consequences,
is the unblushing selfishness of the greatest civilized
nations. While boasting of their military power, and loudly
proclaiming their Christianity, not one of them has raised a
finger to save a Christian people, the remnant of an ancient
civilization, from the most barbarous persecution, torture,
and wholesale massacre. A hundred thousand Armenians murdered
or starved to death while the representatives of the great
powers coldly looked on—and prided themselves on their
unanimity in all making the same useless protests—will surely
be referred to by the historian of the future, as the most
detestable combination of hypocrisy and inhumanity that the
world has yet produced, and as the crowning proof of the utter
rottenness of the boasted civilization of the Nineteenth
Century.
{341}
When the brightness of future ages shall have dimmed the
glamour of our material progress, the judgment of history will
surely be, that the ethical standard of our rulers was a
deplorably low one, and that we were unworthy to possess the
great and beneficent powers that science had placed in our
hands.

"But although this century has given us so many examples of
failure, it has also given us hope for the future. True
humanity, the determination that the crying social evils of
our time shall not continue; the certainty that they can be
abolished; an unwavering faith in human nature, have never
been so strong, so vigorous, so rapidly growing as they are
to-day."

_A. R. Wallace,
The Wonderful Century,
chapter 21
(copyright, Dodd, Mead &; Company, New York,
quoted with permission)._

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY:
Expansion of the European races during the Century.
Changes in the distribution of political power.
Dominance of the Anglo-American peoples.
Rise of the United States of America to the highest rank.

At a dinner given by the Manchester Statistical Society,
October 17, 1900, Sir Robert Giffen, the eminent statistician,
made a notable speech on the political ideas which the
statistics of the Nineteenth Century suggest. "The first of
these was the prodigious rate at which the civilized world—
the community of European nations and nations of European
origin—was growing. The population of Europe and of nations of
European origin like the United States might now be put at
something over 500,000,000. The United States themselves might
be put at nearly 80 millions; Russia in its recent census
showed a population which must already have grown to about 135
millions; Germany about 55 millions; the United Kingdom, with the
self-governing colonies of Canada and Australasia and the
white population of South Africa, 55 millions;
Austria-Hungary, 45 millions; France, 40 millions; Italy, 32
millions; Spain and Portugal, 25 millions; Scandinavian
countries, ten millions; Holland and Belgium, ten millions;
and other European countries, 20 millions. A century ago the
corresponding figure to this 500,000,000 would not have been
more than about 170,000,000. The economic development of the
people had been even more marvellous. The wealth of the people
all told, which would probably not have been reckoned at more
than £5,000,000,000 at the beginning of the century, must be
reckoned now by tens of thousands of millions.

"Again the development was for the most part not uniform among
the European populations. It was most marked in the
Anglo-American section. The increase here was from a
population of not more than about 20 millions, which was the
population of the United States and the United Kingdom
together 100 years ago, to a population of not less than 130
millions at the present time. Russia and Germany also showed
remarkable increases, but nothing like this. This astonishing
growth of population meant a great change in the relative
position of the European nations in the world—their relative
weight in international politics. Practically the non-European
races of the world had all the time been stationary, except in
India, where the 'pax Britannica' had permitted the native
population to expand. The result was that the forces of
civilization, as against those of the black and yellow races,
had become practically irresistible. The numbers were
relatively far greater than ever they were before, and the
economic force was indefinitely greater. A great change in the
distribution of political power among European nations
themselves was also indicated. The existence alone of the
United States implied an immense change. If we considered that
an empire like that of Britain had its strength rather
diminished than increased by the possession of territories
like India, then the United States having a larger European
population than that of the British Empire might be considered
the most powerful State in the world as far as population and
resources were concerned. No doubt Russia had a much larger
population, but the inferiority of the units was so great that
the preeminence of the United States was not in question.
Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom had all grown, while
France and Austria had by comparison remained stationary, so
that now the great world Powers were four only—the United
States, Britain, Russia, and Germany, with France a doubtful
fifth. The extent of the revolution that had taken place in a
century was evident, and obviously accounted for much that was
going on in international politics.

"If the forces now in existence continue to operate as they
had done in the past century for only a few more generations,
the close of the coming century must witness a further
transformation, whose beginnings would be apparent in the
lifetime of some amongst us. It was a reasonable probability
that unless some great internal change should take place in
the ideas and conduct of the European races themselves, the
population of 500 millions would in another century become one
of 1,500 to 2,000 millions. The black and yellow races still
remaining, as far as one could see, comparatively stationary,
this would make a greatly changed world. The yellow peril, for
instance, of which we heard so much, would have vanished,
because the yellow races themselves would be so much
outnumbered. What would be the 400 millions of China compared
with 1,500 to 2,000 millions of European race? Further
progress must also be made in the redistribution of power
among European nations. International politics would be more
and more limited to the affairs of what were already the four
great Powers—the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany,
and Russia. The most serious problem would of course be
whether the dilemma stated by Malthus and hitherto put aside
by the occupation of new lands, would at length become an
urgently practical question. It was impossible not to wonder
which of the two forces—the growth of population and the
increase of the needs of the growing population on the one
side, and the growth of invention and mechanical power in
supplying human wants on the other side—would gain as time
went on. Referring to the desire to secure new markets abroad,
Sir Robert Giffen said that the figures with which he had been
dealing pointed to quite another source of new markets. Surely
there could be no lack of new customers if the 500 millions of
the advanced races themselves were to be doubled in from 30 to
50 years and trebled or quadrupled in a century."

_London Times, October 18, 1900._

{342}

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY:
The lengthened average of human life.

"What has been the chief characteristic of the nineteenth
century? No two critics agree, nor can they, because each
prefers a different quality. One singles out science, another,
invention, as the dominant trait. A third, who looks mainly at
the political aspect of life, says democracy. Others, again,
say pessimism, philanthropy, doubt, or toleration. So many
features, so much diversity, argue at least for
many-sidedness.

"There is one characteristic, however, which distinguishes the
nineteenth century from all previous centuries—a
characteristic which has become too common to attract the
attention it deserves, although it really measures all the
rest: this is longevity. During the past one hundred years the
length of life of the average man in the United States and in
the more civilized parts of Europe has increased from a little
over 30 to about 40 years. A multitude of causes, mostly
physical, have contributed to this result. Foremost among
these should be placed
(1) whatever may be included under the general term sanitation;
(2) improved methods in medicine; and
(3) the more regular habits of living which are the direct
outcome of industrial life on a large scale.

"These are some of the evident means by which life has been
lengthened. Inventions, which have made production cheap and
the transportation of all products both cheap and easy, have
had an influence too great to be computed. And no doubt much
has been due to a general improvement in methods of
government; although, in the main, there has been much less
progress in practical government than is commonly supposed. No
great railroad company or banking house or manufacturing
corporation could prosper if its officers and employees were
chosen and kept in office according to the system by which
political offices, almost everywhere, are filled. 'None hut
experts wanted,' is the sign written over the entrance to
every profession, trade, and occupation—except government.

"But, whatever governments have done or left undone, the fact
to be insisted on here is, that the average man to-day lives
almost ten years longer than his grandfather lived."

_W. R. Thayer,
Longevity and Degeneration
(Forum, February, 1900)._

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY:
The Musical Century.

"Music is the only one of the fine arts of which it can be
said that it reached its highest development in the nineteenth
century. It is the modern art par excellence; and while
everybody has been told that it is the youngest of the arts,
few realize how much is implied in that assertion."

_Henry T. Finck,
The Musical Century
(New York Evening Post, January 12, 1901)._

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY:
The Woman's Century.

"Victor Hugo predicted that the nineteenth century would be
known as Woman's Century. The comparison of the woman of 1800
and the woman of 1900 offers abundant proof of the correctness
of the prophecy."

_Mrs. Carrie C. Catt,
Women in the Industries and Professions
(New York Evening Post, January 12, 1901)._

"In 1900 a third of all the college students in the United
States are women. Sixty per cent. of the pupils in the
secondary schools, both public and private, are girls—i. e.,
more girls are preparing for college than boys. Women having
in general more leisure than men, there is reason to expect
that there will soon be more women than men in our colleges
and graduate schools. The time, too, has passed when girls
went to college to prepare themselves solely for teaching or
for other bread-winning occupations. In considerable numbers
they now seek intellectual resources and the enrichment of
their private lives. Thus far between 50 and 60 per cent. of
women college graduates have at some time taught. In the
country at large more than 70 per cent. of the teaching is
done by women, in the North Atlantic portion over 80 per cent.
Even in the secondary schools, public and private, more women
than men are teaching, though in all other countries the
advanced instruction of boys is exclusively in the hands of
men. Never before has a nation intrusted all the school
training of the vast majority of its future population, men as
well as women, to women alone."

_Mrs. Alice F. Palmer,
The Higher Education of Women
(New York Evening Post, January 12, 1901)._

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY:
The Age of Steel succeeding the Age of Iron.

"The age of iron, which passed away during the last century,
was succeeded by the age of Bessemer steel, which enjoyed a
reign of only thirty-six years, beginning, as it did, in 1864,
and is in turn now passing away to be succeeded by the age of
Siemens open-hearth steel. Already the product of open-hearth
is far beyond that of Bessemer in Britain, and such the writer
ventures to predict will soon be the case in the United
States."

_Andrew Carnegie,
The Development of Steel Manufacture
(New York Evening Post, January 12, 1901)._

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY:
As the "Age of Steam."

See (in volume 4)
STEAM ENGINE, STEAM LOCOMOTION, etc.; and
(in this volume)
SCIENCE, RECENT: MECHANICAL.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY:
As the "Electric Age."

See (in volume 2)
ELECTRICAL, DISCOVERY; and
(in this volume)
SCIENCE, RECENT: ELECTRICAL.

----------THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: End--------

NIPPUR, Explorations of the ruins of.

See (in this volume)
ARCHÆOLOGICAL RESEARCH: BABYLONIA: AMERICAN EXPLORATION.

NIUCHWANG:
"Niuchwang, while a comparatively small city of but 60,000
population, is of especial importance to the United States as
a treaty port. It is located at the extreme north of the Gulf
of Pechili, considerably farther north than Tientsin, and is
of especial importance to the United States because of the
demand for goods from this country in that section. … The
proposed Russian railway line, which is projected through
Manchuria and the province of Shingking to the port of Port
Arthur, passes near Niuchwang and is to be connected by a
short line. Another line, to be built by British capital, will
connect Niuchwang with Shanhaikwan, which is already in railway
connection with Peking, the capital of the Empire."

_United States, Bureau of Statistics, Monthly Summary,
March, 1899, page 2196._

NIUCHWANG:
Russian occupation.

See (in this volume)
MANCHURIA: A. D. 1900.

NORFOLK ISLAND:
Change of government.

(in this volume)
AUSTRALIA (NEW SOUTH WALES): A. D. 1896.

{343}

NORTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1897-1899.
Local Dispensary Laws.

An Act applying the South Carolina "dispensary" system of
regulation for the liquor traffic (see, in this volume, SOUTH
CAROLINA: A. D. 1892-1899) to Fayetteville was passed by the
Legislature in 1897, and several smaller towns secured local
legislation to the same effect in 1899; but attempts to carry
a general dispensary law for the State were defeated.

NORTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1898.
Race war in Wilmington.

Wilmington, North Carolina, was the scene, in November, of
what can only be called a fierce revolution, whereby the city
government, dominated by the colored population, which
outnumbered the white, was violently overturned by the latter.
The race conflict was precipitated by an article in a Republican
newspaper, edited by a negro, which reflected on the honor of
some of the white women, and caused wild excitement among the
white men. The offending newspaper office was destroyed and
its editor fled. Resistance being offered, furious fighting
occurred, in which a considerable number of negroes was
killed, many were wounded, and hundreds were driven by terror
from the town. White Republican officials were also expelled
or took to flight, and their opponents secured control of city
affairs.

NORTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1900.
Constitutional amendment for the qualification of the suffrage.

By a constitutional amendment, adopted in August, 1900, the
following qualification of the suffrage was established:

"SECTION 4.
Every person presenting himself for registration shall be able
to read and write any section of the constitution in the
English language: and, before he shall be entitled to vote, he
shall have paid, on or before the 1st day of May of the year
in which he proposes to vote, his poll tax for the previous
year as prescribed by Article V, section 1, of the
constitution. But no male person who was, on January 1, 1867,
or at any time prior thereto, entitled to vote under the laws
of any State in the United States wherein he then resided, and
no lineal descendant of any such person, shall be denied the
right to register and vote at any election in this State by
reason of his failure to possess the educational qualification
herein prescribed, provided he shall have registered in
accordance with the terms of this section prior to December,
1908. The general assembly shall provide for the registration
of all persons entitled to vote without the educational
qualifications herein prescribed, and shall, on or before
November 1, 1908, provide for the making of a permanent record
of such registration, and all persons so registered shall
forever thereafter have the right to vote in all elections by
the people in this State, unless disqualified under section 2
of this article: Provided, Such person shall have paid his
poll tax as above required."

NORTHWEST TERRITORIES, Canadian:
Self-government granted.

See (in this volume)
CANADA: A. D. 1897 (OCTOBER).

NORWAY.

See (in this volume)
SWEDEN AND NORWAY.

NOVA SCOTIA.

See (in this volume)
CANADA.

NOVA ZEMBLA, Recent exploration of.

See (in this volume)
POLAR EXPLORATION, 1895, 1896, 1897, 1900.

NUFFAR, NIFFER, Explorations at.

See (in this volume)
ARCHÆOLOGICAL RESEARCH: BABYLONIA: AMERICAN EXPLORATION.

NUPÉ, British subjugation of.

See (in this volume)
AFRICA: A. D. 1897 (NIGERIA).

NUREMBERG: A. D. 1900.
Remarkable growth in five years.

See (in this volume)
GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (DECEMBER).

NYASSALAND.

See (in this volume)
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA PROTECTORATE.

O.

OIL RIVERS PROTECTORATE, The.

See (in this volume)
NIGERIA: A. D. 1882-1899.

OLD-AGE INSURANCE: In Germany.

See (in this volume)
GERMANY: A. D. 1897-1900.

OLD-AGE PENSIONS:
In New South Wales.

See (in this volume)
AUSTRALIA (NEW SOUTH WALES): A. D. 1900.

OLD-AGE PENSIONS:
In New Zealand.

See (in this volume)
NEW ZEALAND: A. D. 1899;
and AUSTRALIA: RECENT EXTENSIONS OF DEMOCRACY.

OLD-AGE PENSIONS:
The question in England.

See (in this volume)
ENGLAND: A. D. 1896; and 1899-1900.

OLNEY, Richard:
Correspondence with Lord Salisbury on the Venezuela boundary
question.

See (in this volume)
VENEZUELA: A. D. 1895 (JULY), and (NOVEMBER).

OLYMPIC GAMES, Revival of.

See (in this volume)
ATHENS: A. D. 1896.

OMAHA: A. D. 1898.
The Trans-Mississippi Exposition.

A highly successful Trans-Mississippi Exposition was opened on
the 1st of June and closed on the last day of October, having
been attended by 2,600,000 people. Buildings and grounds were
prepared with beautiful effect, at a cost of $2,500,000.

OMDURMAN:
Capital of the Khalifa.
Capture by the Anglo-Egyptian Army.

See (in this volume)
EGYPT: A. D. 1885-1896; and 1897-1898.

ONTARIO.

See (in this volume)
CANADA.

"OPEN DOOR,"
The commercial policy of the.

See (in this volume)
CHINA: A. D. 1899-1900 (SEPTEMBER-FEBRUARY).

OPIUM COMMISSION, Report of the.

See (in this volume)
INDIA: A. D. 1895 (APRIL).

ORANGE FREE STATE: A. D. 1895.
Proposed federal union with the Transvaal.

See (in this volume)
AFRICA: A. D. 1895 (ORANGE FREE STATE).

ORANGE FREE STATE: A. D. 1897.
Treaty with the South African Republic.

See (in this volume)
SOUTH AFRICA (ORANGE FREE STATE AND TRANSVAAL):
A. D. 1897 (APRIL).

ORANGE FREE STATE: A. D. 1899-1900.
Making common cause with the South African Republic.
War with Great Britain.

See (in this volume)
SOUTH AFRICA (ORANGE FREE STATE):
A. D. 1899 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER), and after.

ORANGE FREE STATE: A. D. 1900 (May.)
Proclamation of annexation to the British dominions.

See (in this volume)
SOUTH AFRICA (ORANGE FREE STATE): A. D. 1900 (MAY).

{344}

OSMAN DIGNA.

See (in this volume)
EGYPT: A. D. 1885-1896; 1897-1898; and 1899-1900.

OTIS, General:
Reports as Military Governor of the Philippines.

See (in this volume)
PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: A. D. 1898 (AUGUST-DECEMBER).

OTTAWA: A. D. 1900.
Great fire.

The city of Ottawa, capital of the Dominion of Canada, and the
lumber manufacturing town of Hull, on the opposite side of the
Ottawa River, were both devastated, on the 26th of April, by
one of the most destructive fires of the century. It
originated in the upsetting of a lamp in a dwelling in Hull.
This was at half-past ten o'clock in the morning. A big gale
blowing from the northeast made quick work of the inflammable
houses in Hull, and by twelve o'clock the flames had
reached the river-bank and leaped across to the Ottawa side.
The fire then retraced its steps in Hull, and destroyed a
group of factories. It "blazed a crescent-shaped path five
miles long and a mile wide, destroying in its journey the
public buildings and the residential part of Hull, the
industrial area of the Chaudiere, and the suburbs of the
Ottawa laboring classes at Mechanicsburg, Rochesterville, and
Hintonburg. Fully 15,000 people were rendered homeless, and
$15,000,000 worth of property was annihilated."

_Canadian Magazine, July, 1900._

OTTOMAN BANK:
Attack of Armenian revolutionists at Constantinople.

See (in this volume)
TURKEY: A. D. 1896 (AUGUST).

P.

PAARDEBERG, Battle of.

See (in this volume)
SOUTH AFRICA (THE FIELD OF WAR):
A. D. 1900 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY).

PACT OF HALEPA, The.

See (in this volume)
TURKEY: A. D. 1896.

PAGO PAGO: Acquisition by the United States.

See (in this volume)
SAMOAN ISLANDS.

PALESTINE: A. D. 1897-1901.
The Zionist movement for Jewish colonization.

See (in this volume)
JEWS: A. D. 1897-1901.

PALESTINE: A. D. 1898.
Visit of the German Emperor.

See (in this volume)
GERMANY: A. D. 1898 (OCTOBER-NOVEMBER).

PALESTINE: A. D. 1901.
Turkish restriction on Jewish visits.

See (in this volume)
JEWS: A. D. 1901.

PALMER, General John M.:
Candidacy for the American Presidency in 1896.

See (in this volume)
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1896 (JUNE-NOVEMBER).

PAMIR REGION, The:
Anglo-Russian agreement concerning.

See (in this volume)
AFGHANISTAN: A. D. 1895.

PAMPANGAS, The.

See (in this volume)
PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: THE NATIVE INHABITANTS.

PANA, Riotous coal-mining strike at.

See (in this volume)
INDUSTRIAL DISTURBANCES: A. D. 1898.

PANAMA CANAL, The: A. D. 1900.

See (in this volume)
PANAMA CANAL;
and (in this volume)
CANAL, INTEROCEANIC: A. D. 1900 (NOVEMBER).

PAN-AMERICAN EXPOSITION, The.

See (in this volume)
BUFFALO: A. D. 1901.

PANGASINANS, The.

See (in this volume)
PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: THE NATIVE INHABITANTS.

PAN-GERMANIC UNION.

See (in this volume)
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: A. D. 1901.

----------PAPACY: Start--------

PAPACY: A. D. 1894.
Conference with Eastern Patriarchs.

A conference of Eastern Patriarchs to consider the reunion of
the Eastern Churches (Armenian, Maronite, Melchite, etc.) with
the Church of Rome was opened at the Vatican, in October,
under the presidency of the Pope. The meeting had no result.

PAPACY: A. D. 1894-1895.
The Hungarian Ecclesiastical Laws.

See (in this volume)
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: A. D. 1894-1895.

PAPACY: A. D. 1896 (March).
Resumption of authority over the Coptic Church.

The authority of the Pope over the Coptic Church was resumed
on the 30th of March, 1896, after a suspension of four
centuries, by the re-establishment of the Catholic
Patriarchate of Alexandria. Bishop Macarius was appointed
Patriarch and two bishops were appointed for Upper and Lower
Egypt.

PAPACY: A. D. 1896 (September).
Decision on the invalidity of Anglican orders.

In September, 1896, the final decision of the Vatican, on a
reopened question as to the validity of ordinations under the
ritual of the Church of England, was announced by Pope Leo
XIII. in a bull which declares: "After long study, I must
confirm the decree of my predecessors, that all ordinations
made under the Anglican rite are absolutely invalid." Soon
after the decision was announced, a writer in the
"Contemporary Review" gave the following account of
circumstances connected with it:

"The question of Anglican Orders was taken up in connection
with the appeal for union made by Leo XIII. in the Encyclical'
Præclara' of 1894, and more particularly in his letter to the
English people. The group of Anglicans of whom Lord Halifax is
the spokesman took this appeal seriously, and ever since that
time negotiations have been going on more or less continuously
between them and the Vatican. … The idea of an incorporate
union, so dear to Lord Halifax, and so much favoured in the
first instance by the Pope, could only be carried out on the
basis of a prior admission that the Anglican Church had an
existence as a Church, and was therefore in a position to
discuss a union with the Roman Church.
{345}
Once recognise the validity of her Orders, and it would be
possible to go into conference as to the points of difference
between the two Churches, and the means of coming to an
agreement. It is quite certain that the Pope entered heartily
into these views. The Abbé Duchesne was accordingly deputed to
inquire into the validity of the Anglican Orders, and was well
aware that a favourable conclusion would be very well
received. This was before the Abbé was put at the head of the
French College at Rome. He made his investigation, arrived at
the conclusion that the Orders were valid, sent his report to
the Vatican, and received from Cardinal Rampolla a letter of
thanks and congratulations, together with a grand silver
medal, which the Holy Father sent him as a sign of his
satisfaction and particular goodwill. All this happened in the
winter of 1894-95.