Loading ...INTRODUCTION
No man ever had his work, while under way, more misjudged than mine has been; experts of all kinds have made maps to show where I was wrong in my calculations and estimates, yet my estimates were correct. All worked out much better than I anticipated, and I wonder what I could have done for this nation had I been left alone in peace, to serve the money entrusted to me; or had I back of me people strong enough to have said “Hands off.”
Let me take your time to give you my view-point of life; then the balance I write will be clearer to you.
As the world advances in civilization and population, new conditions need new utilities. Men always reaching out for advancement send out their desire into the realm of thought. Cities grow, population increases; it takes men a long time to go to and from their business. They feel the need of quicker transit, and day by day this desire shapes itself until some morning the city awakes and finds some man has solved part of the problem; as McAdoo solved the great problem of interstate tubes between New York and Jersey City. Now, such a man is not the originator of these blessings he is to confer; it was the ceaseless desire of the people that found expression through his mind ; he was the messenger boy sent to deliver the message, and if the world understood this as well as I do, it would never attempt to trip any of nature’s messenger boys, but rather help them all to deliver their messages.
Westinghouse felt the thrill that went through the traveler’s mind when the old-time brakemen rushed out and applied the hand brake. He felt the desire for greater safety, and he delivered the message of the air-brake. Morse felt the need of the world for a better means of sending news, and delivered the message of the telegraph. Field felt all nature’s need of quicker communication, and delivered the message of the cable. Bell felt the need of carrying the human voice, and delivered the message of the telephone. Edison has felt any number of the world’s needs, and he has been busy in delivering messages of all kinds.
There is no use disputing it. It’s as fixed a law as the laws that govern the solar system. Nature picks the messenger boy to deliver all of the earth’s great blessings. Storms may assail him; he may lose his way; wolves may chase him up a tree and keep him there all day; bandits may capture him and hold him for a ransom, but he is still destiny’s agent, and he and no one else is the one to deliver the message. Man cannot pick the men to deliver these messages. Nature or God alone can.
I will admit that the journey has been long and my feet are sore, and that I would not mind the rest that would come could I give the Orient message into the hands of others; but no one else can read it as well as I can. They will leave out some of the cities that have been written in the message, and thus unintentionally rob the shareholders of earnings that would otherwise accrue to them; so I feel that it is my duty to go the whole journey and deliver the message of blessing to the Pacific, and I will, if it is in my power to do so.
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