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ands of the scientist enable him accurately to forecast the weather, to anticipate and provide against storms on land and at sea, to detect seismic disturbances and warn against the dangers incident to their repetition; and no wireless telegraphy with its manifold blessings to humanity.
All these great achievements have come to us from the hand of the inventor. He it is who has enabled us to inhabit the air above us, to tunnel the earth beneath, explore the mysteries of the sea, and in a thousand ways, unknown to our forefathers, multiply human comforts and minimize human misery. Indeed, it is difficult to recall a single feature of our national progress along material lines that has not been vitalized by the touch of the inventor's genius.
Into this vast yet specific field of scientific industry the colored man has, contrary to the belief of many, made his entry, and has brought to his work in it that same degree of patient inquisitiveness, plodding industry and painstaking experiment that has so richly rewarded others in the same line of endeavor, namely, the endeavor both to create new things and to effect such new combinations of old things as will adapt them to new uses. We know that the colored man has accomplished something--indeed, a very great deal--in the field of invention, but it would be of the first importance to us now to know exactly what he has done, and the commercial value of his productions. Unfortunately for us, however, this can never be known in all its completeness.
A very recent experiment in the matter of collecting information on this subject has disclosed some remarkably striking facts, not the least interesting of which is the very widespread belief among those who ought to know better that the colored man has done absolutely nothing of value in the line of invention. This is but a reflex of the opinions variously expressed by others at different times on the subject of the capacity of the colored man for mental work of a high order. Thomas Jefferson's remark that