There is one use of gas which has already proved an immense service to those who, in the strictest sense, live by their wits.  In a small private workshop, with the assistance of gas furnaces, blowpipes, and other gas heating appliances, it is a very easy matter to carry out important experiments privately on a practical scale.  A man with an idea can readily carry out his idea without skilled assistance, and without it ever making its appearance in the works until it is an accomplished fact.  How many of you have been blocked in important experiments by the tacit resistance of an old fashioned good workman, who cannot or will not see what you are driving at, and who persists in saying that what you want is not possible?  The application of gas will often enable you to go over his head, and do what, if the workman had his own way, would be an impossibility.  When a man is unable or unwilling to see a way out of a difficulty, a master or foreman has the power to take the law in his own hands; and when a workman has been met with this kind of a reply once or twice, he usually gives way, and does not in future attempt to dictate and teach his master his own business.  In carrying out this matter, it is not necessary that a specimen of fine workmanship shall be produced.  A man usually appreciates the wits which have produced what he has considered impossible.  In purely experimental work I think I may fairly state that the use of gas as a fuel in the private workshop and laboratory has done incalculable service in the improvement of processes and trades, and has played an important part in insuring the success and fortunes of many hundreds of experimenters, who have brought their labors to a successful issue in cases where, in its absence, neither time nor patience would have been available.  I need only to call to your mind the number of new alloys which, for almost endless different purposes, have come into use during the last eight or ten years.  I think the use of small gas furnaces in private workshops and laboratories may fairly be said to have enabled the experiments on most, if not all, of these alloys to be carried out to a successful issue.

I have been asked to say something regarding gas engines.  The only thing I can say is that I know very little about them.  In my own works we have about 300,000 cubic feet of space, all of which requires to be heated, more or less, during the greater part of the year.  For this purpose we must have a steam boiler, and having this steam, it costs little to run it first through the engine, and so obtain our power for a good part of the year practically without any cost.  It would not pay, under any circumstances, to have two separate sources of power for summer and winter; and therefore the use of gas for power has never been considered.