Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/514

handled. As each sounding-board represents a piano, one can easily estimate from this basis of observation alone the wonderful dimensions of the piano trade. The unique business in Dolgeville is well worthy of study as a curious example of American industrial life. Its relation to the piano industry is apparent.

In 1850 there were 204 establishments in this country making musical instruments; piano-fortes were not separately reported upon; 2,307 hands were employed, and the product represented $2,580,715. We find that in 1860 21,707 pianos, representing $6,518,432, were manufactured in the United States. The annexed table of statistics shows the industry in 1880, and is the latest:

State.	No. of establish- ments.	Capital.	No. of workmen.	Wages paid.	Cost of materials.	Value of products.
New York	82	$6,627,845	3,966	$3,213,481	$3,579,131	$8,084,154
Massachusetts	45	1,905,700	1,504	890,721	1,132,847	2,652,856
Maryland	4	638,382	385	200,988	157,699	534,099
Connecticut	3	257,000	302	142,057	182,018	386,583
Pennsylvania	5	169,500	154	87,044	81,145	217,924
Indiana	2	77,000	90	42,500	43,000	109,000
California	6	50,000	27	18,425	41,725	92,700
Kentucky	5	40,700	26	12,833	13,800	42,200
Illinois	5	20,360	27	16,902	11,800	37,675
New Hampshire	3	18,000	32	8,894	15,994	30,380
Missouri	7	21,350	19	10,398	8,060	27,200
Ohio	1	15,000	20	6,000	3,000	15,000
New Jersey	2	10,200	7	4,500	6,000	13,000
Wisconsin	2	10,600	10	4,250	4,500	12,570
Michigan	1	4,000	4	2,200	1,500	5,500
Texas	1	4,000	2	2,000	900	3,500
1880	174	$9,869,577	6,565	$4,663,193	$5,283,119	$12,264,521

When the statistics for 1890 appear, it will be found that the increase in production has been even larger in proportion during the last ten years.

 

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"However prophetic," says Mr. A. II. Green in Nature, "may have been the far-seeing premonition of men in advance of their age in the dim past, and however invaluable may have been the additions made to the superstructure since, it can scarcely be doubted that the foundation-stones of geology were Laid by Scotch-men and Englishmen toward the end of the last and during the earlier part of the present century. And what a charm there is about the story of those sturdy pioneers—not perhaps quite the men whom one would have picked out as most fitted or most likely to become the fathers of a new science! It has about it the elements of a genuine romance. For the early training of few of these men was such as to give a scientific bent to their mind; they did not have what we are pleased to call 'the advantage of a scientific education'; it is probable that they never spoke, perhaps never dreamed of such a phrase as 'the scientific method,' which we are so fond of formularizing, and on which we plume ourselves somewhat. But in spite of these seeming drawbacks, rather perhaps because with these men genius was allowed to run its spontaneous, untrammeled course, they opened out to mankind a domain of knowledge, the very outskirts of which had been barely touched upon before.