The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c6.s2.7

c6.s2.7

Historically considered, some of these achievements are fifty years old, others seventy-five, almost none above a century. The steam engine was first applied to cotton manufacture in 1785. But it did not come into general use before the third decade of the nineteenth century. Let Americans try to visualize the life and conditions of those "Pioneers" immortalized by Walt Whitman who a few generations ago had been laying the foundations of the Middle West and the Farthest West. It is also fair to recollect the social and industrial position of Germany in the days of Goethe, the educational condition of the people of France about the time when Arthur Young was touring in that country, and the condition of the working classes and the female sex of England at the time of the Napoleonic wars.²