And if after that the public like to buy forms of apparatus which have
not been certified, it is their own fault; but I do think that the
maker of any stove or geyser which causes a death should be put upon
his trial for manslaughter.
In conclusion, let us consider for a moment what is likely to be the
future of gas during the next half century. The labor troubles, bad as
they are and have been, will not cease for many a weary year. The
victims of imperfect education (more dangerous than none at all, as,
while destroying natural instinct, it leaves nothing in its place)
will still listen and be led by the baneful influence of irresponsible
demagogues, who care for naught so long as they can read their own
inflammatory utterances in the local press, and gain a temporary
notoriety at the expense of the poor fools whose cause they profess to
serve. The natural tendency of this will be that every labor-saving
contrivance that can will be pressed into the gas manager's service;
and that, although coal (of a poorer class than at present used) will
still be employed as a source of gas, the present retort setting will
quickly give way to inclined retorts on the Coze principle; while,
instead of the present wasteful method of quenching the red hot coke,
it will be shot direct into the generator of the water gas plant, and
the water gas carbureted with the benzene hydrocarbons derived from
the smoke of the blast furnace and coke oven, or from the creosote oil
of the tar distiller, by the process foreshadowed in the concluding
sentences of my last lecture.
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