mes. We are
living in an age that does things. Whatever the difficulties, it somehow
gets things done. It brings to pass even the seemingly impossible. Are
there mountains in the way? It goes over, under, or through.--There are no
mountains! Is there an isthmus, preventing the union of great seas and
blocking commerce? It erases the isthmus from the world's map.--There is
no isthmus! The masterful time-spirit has little patience with puttering
inefficiency. It expects every man to pull his weight, to earn his keep,
to do his own task, and not to whimper.

Our cities are hives of efficiency, cruel efficiency often. With new
pace-makers every year, the wheels of industry speed ever faster, raising
the percentage of effectiveness, per dollar of capital and per capita
employed. Hundreds at the wheels, with scant nerves, fail to keep the
pace; and the race goes by them. But the pace keeps up. Other workmen grow
more deft and skillful. The product is both cheapened and perfected. The
plant becomes more profitable, under fine executive efficiency. The
junk-heap grows apace: Out goes every obsolete half-success. In comes
every new machine which reduces friction, doubles results, halves the cost
of maintenance, and swells dividends. Surely efficiency is the modern
shibboleth.

Here is the new Tungsten electric lamp, which uses half the current, at
low voltage, but doubles the light; the very dazzling symbol of
efficiency. How it antiquates the best Edison lamp of yesterday! Yet the
Tungsten becomes old-fashioned in a year. It is too fragile and is
speedily displaced by the improved Mazda.

But _city_ life has no monopoly on efficiency. In fact we do not find in
the mills or factories the best illustrations of modern effectiveness. We
have to go back to the soil. Agriculture has become the newest of the
arts, by the grace of modern science. To make two blades of grass grow
where one grew before is too easy now. Multiplying by two is small boys'
play. Burbank has out-Edisoned Edison! He and other experimenters in the
scientific breeding of plants and animals have increased the efficiency of
every live farmer in the land, and have added perhaps a billion dollars a
year to the nation's wealth.

They have not yet crossed the bee and the firefly, as some one has
suggested, to produce an illuminated bee that could work at night by his
own light. Nor have they produced woven-wire fences by crossing the spider
and the wire-worm! Not