Nappanee High School - Napanet Yearbook (Nappanee, IN)

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BESSIE BEGHTEL Bessie was born February 4, 1888, at Ke-wanee, Ind. She started in school at Warsaw, Ind., but her parents moved to Nappanee when she was nine years old and she commenced her education here in the third room and has continued as a member of the class of 11)07. She is a loyal and good hearted member and has always helped in the ventures of the class. She is to be praised, having finished her education under difficulties, and we predict a great future for her.

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trmumuj nf Ittaritutmj By BESSIE BEGHTEL N this modern era, machines are receiving more attention than ever before. Every one knows how much labor is facilitated by the application of the proper machines. The machine has become the greatest factor in all phases of economy. To create a machine that will produce the greatest results at the least expenditure of time, labor and money, has become the object of man’s most earnest endeavor. A machine may seem absolutely perfect for its purpose today: tomorrow it may lose its economic value by the invention of some greatly improved apparatus. Let one try to picture to himself the quiet slow moving world in which our forefathers lived. Before the days of the locomotive, or the steam boat, before the time of the telephone, or the electric light or motor cars. Think of the contrast between those days and these; of the revelations that have occurred in the ways and means of economical productions. The beginning of this revolution dates back to the advent of the steam engine. From this iirst steam engine has evolved the magnificent steam ships, which sail our seas today, making a trip in six days, which required Columbus, with his crude wind blown craft, over two weeks to make. From it, too, has evolved the modern locomotive, the user of which is able to transport a thousand times as much each hour, as a driver of an ox team could move in a month. Or it can whirl the traveler from Chicago to New York, a distance of nearly one thousand miles, in eighteen hours. A journey which, if taken in the old time stage coach would have consumed weeks. The advent of the steam engine marks the birth of the factory which has developed into such enormous centers of economic productions. It is in these centers that the advantages of the machine is most clearly shown. Today a child tending the battery of Northrup magazine looms weaves miles, w here the old hand loom worker, wove feet: the modern spinning machine does the work of eighty old time spinning wheels and spins six hundred thousand feet more yarn from a pound of same cotton. Think how the poor darkies worked all day separating the cotton from the seed of only a few pounds, until the cotton gin was invented. In the manufacture of stoves,, three men are now able with the aid of machinery to produce as many stoves in one day, as six men could do without the machine. In this and in other iron and steel industries we find great cranes equipped w ith magnets to lift, and handle heavy billets of iron, steel plates and ingots. These machines are able to lift a load of several tons at a time, thus doing away with an untold amount of labor. In the manufacture of straw goods, with the sewing machine, two hundred men can easily do more work in one day, than one thousand could do before the invention of machinery. The toil of miners is lessened by the application of compressed air machines. The product of this labor is hoisted to the earth’s surface by machinery; loaded by machines into cars for transportation and again unloaded or reloaded by the same means. IIow many hours of hard labor would be required of a man with a shovel and barrow to unload a train of some sixty or seventy cars, tilled with coal? Now in our great coal markets these cars are run on large machines, clamped down by hydraulic clamps, lifted and turned bodily over and its entire contents dumped into tubs ready to be conveyed by other machines into shipholds or coal yards as the case may be. With this system tons are landed quickly and cheaply, and w hat once would have required a week's labor by many men is now done in a day by a few. One of these “tippers” as they are called, is able to handle twenty five thousand tons in one working day. When you read the daily paper of a great city run off on gigantic presses at the rate of thirty thousand per hour, think of the trouble Franklin would have had to produce even one edition with his crude hand press, with which he issued one of America’s first publications. In the great cities where land is so valuable, space is economized by great sky scrapers. Which are only made possible to reach the top by means of the elevator. These in turn are being displaced in large stores by the modern eculator, or moving stair way, which transports more people in less time, occupies less space, and requires less help than the elevator. The machine has found a place in the office. Here is the counting machine, the adding machine, the copying and writing machine. An addressing machine is made by which an office boy can address six thousand letters per hour, at a cost of six cents per thousand. On the farm too, is this tendency to increase the productive powers of labor by the application of mechanical appliances, manifested. In the days before machinery was invented consider how the farmer had to work to till the soil, plant the grain and reap the harvest. Now the steam thresher turns out car loads of grain, where the man with the flail threshed bushels. The same results are accomplished with the reaper, the mower, and all well known farming implements. Few occupations are harder on workmen than excavating trenches, especially under a hot sun. Even 21