.

PIONEERS OF THE MACHINE SHOP.
There is a tinge of melancholy about the life of such a pioneer as Oliver Evans, that early American mechanic of great genius, whose story is briefly outlined in a preceding chapter.

Here was a man of imagination and sensibility, as well as practical power; conferring great benefits on his countrymen, yet in chronic poverty; derided by his neighbors, robbed by his beneficiaries; his property, the fruit of his brain and toil, in the end malevolently destroyed.

The lot of the man who sees far ahead of his time, and endeavors to lead his fellows in ways for which they are not prepared, has always been hard.
John Stevens, too, as we have seen, met defeat when he tried to thrust a steam railroad on a country that was not yet ready for it.

His mechanical conceptions were not marked by genius equal to that of Evans, but they were still too far advanced to be popular.