The pull represents the
power of gravitation that holds the earth to the sun.
If we use steel wires instead of gravitation for this purpose, each
strong enough to support half a score of people (1,500 pounds), how
many would it take? We would need to distribute them over the whole
earth: from pole to pole, from side to side, over all the land and sea.
Then they would need to be so near together that a mouse could not run
around among them.
Here is a measureless power. Can it be gotten to take Pittsburgh coal
to New Orleans? Certainly; it was made to serve man. So the coal is
put on great flatboats, 36 x 176 feet, a thousand tons to a boat, and
gravitation takes the mighty burden down the long toboggan slide of the
Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to the journey's end. How easy!
[Illustration: The Head of the Toboggan Slide.]
One load sent down was 43,000 tons. The flatboats were lashed together
as one solid boat covering six and one half acres, more space than a
whole block of houses in a city, with one little steamboat to steer.
There is always plenty of power; just belt on for anything you want
done. This is only one thing that gravitation does for man on these
rivers. And there are many rivers. They serve the savage on his log
and the scientist in his palace steamer with equal readiness.
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