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The boll weevil, higher labor-costs, and the advantages of diversified agriculture seem likely to hold our own production to moderate figures and to make in the long run for much higher prices for this essential fibre. In that event it is by no means beyond the range of possibility that an artificial substitute for cotton may appear. Artificial silk, first shown at the Paris Exposition of 1889, is now produced in greater quantity than real silk, and its manufacture is still expanding rapidly. We are not likely to see an artificial wool, because of the structural peculiarities of the fibre and the absence of an appropriate raw material.

The next decade or two will see a great development of paper-making in the South, where pulpwood-now, elsewhere, increasingly scarce and costly is still abundant and relatively cheap. Rosin and turpentine, now derived from standing trees, will be extracted from the stumps of yellow pine remaining on millions of acres of cut-over lands. Nowhere, in short, is there likely to be a greater extension of industrial activity than in the South, and nowhere in the world is there greater opportunity for the development of chemical industry than in Louisiana, where salt, sulphur, oil, and gas occur in close proximity.

V

The rate of our economic progress is primarily a function of the abundance and cost of energy. The preparation and use of fuels and the generation and distribution of energy are basic industrial activities, which, in one way or another, vitally concern us all. The remarkable developments now in progress in these fields assume, therefore, a constructive significance and a far-reaching importance. The smoke nuisance, which is rapidly extending

the twilight zone over America, has become well-nigh intolerable in England. There, as here, it defaces buildings, damages furnishings, increases humidity, and is highly deleterious to health. health. In Pittsburgh it is held responsible for a very acute and fatal form of pneumonia. The growing realization that our cities must be provided with smokeless fuel and the excessive cost of anthracite have encouraged the expenditure of much effort and great sums of money on processes for the lowtemperature distillation of coal. These are designed to secure greater chemical values from the coal and to provide an artificial anthracite. During the past year the Coalite Company in England appears to have measurably solved the problem and to be operating upon a commercial basis.

The use of powdered coal, which is nearly as flexible and convenient as gas, is becoming common in great power-plants. In one notable installation the coal, in shallow cast-iron trays, is first floated across a bath of molten lead to obtain, by low-temperature distillation, motor spirit, oils, tar, ammonia, and gas, while the porous cake remaining is pulverized for use as powdered fuel.

Oil has become as essential as gunpowder to the navies of the world, and almost as dangerous to our politicians. On land the tank-wagon is already as familiar as the coal-truck, and the convenience and temporary cheapness of fuel oil have caused it to replace coal in many thousands of plants and dwellings. This tendency will continue for a time until scarcity and science put new values on petroleum. Both factors are beginning to be operative. The production of oil is decreasing daily, and the synthesis of alcohols and whole series of organic compounds is about to become a part of petroleum technology. When petroleum is costly,

we shall have a great shale-oil industry in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.

Natural which a few years ago gas, constituted three quarters of all the gas sold in the country, is now, after decades of appalling waste, a rapidly waning resource. Its disappearance locally will result in the migration of many gas-fired industries. Its general decline is, moreover, coincident with the opening of a period of remarkable development in the gas industry. In five recent years the city of Baltimore consumed more gas than during the preceding century. The industrial use of gas has just begun. The average gas company now sells 25 per cent of its output for industrial-purposes, about 10 per cent for house heating, and the remainder for such domestic purposes as cooking, water-heating, and a little lighting. It is estimated that gas companies in the future will do at least five times as much business, and that 75 per cent of their sales will be for industrial use and house-heating and 25 per cent for consumption in gasappliances in the home.

To meet this greatly increased demand radical changes in practice will be required, and many such are now under consideration. They include lowtemperature carbonization of coal, its complete gasification, the installation of great gas-works at the mines with high-pressure distribution-systems for the gas, new methods of coking, and campaigns for the legalization of gas of lower heating-power than that now required by law.

Authoritative estimates, based on recent developments, justify the expectation that oxygen, the supporter of combustion, will soon be available at a cost comparable with that of coal and permitting its extensive use in the production of water gas and in many metallurgical operations. A gas-producer operating with an oxygen-steam

blast would, for example, continuously convert the coke and steam into carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Very little carbonic acid would be formed, and practically the entire heat-value of the coal would be deliverable as gas. Every cubic foot of pure oxygen introduced into a metallurgical furnace would avoid the introduction of four cubic feet of inert nitrogen, now introduced with air.

Practice in large steam-plants, and especially in those of central stations, is steadily moving toward higher pressures. Steam pressures of 500 pounds to the square inch will soon be common, and already pressures of 1200 and 1500 pounds are cautiously being tried. They present new problems in the behavior of steel at temperatures near its critical point and the effect upon it of flue gases and those dissolved in water. Turbines are being built to operate at these extremely high pressures and to exhaust into headers supplying other turbines with steam at 250 to 350 pounds. The new turbine supercharger for airplanes is rated to feed to the engine, at a height of 35,000 feet, air at sea-level atmospheric pressure. It has operated at the incredible speed of 41,000 revolutions a minute, or 683 turns a second for the compressor wheel — probably the highest speed ever attained in a commercial mechanism.

The combination of the steam turbine with electric drive for marine propulsion is already installed to the extent of 550,000 horsepower in fortyfive vessels, from battleships to fruiters.

The gas engine in large units is a cumbersome and complicated mechanism. It is now so nearly equaled in efficiency by the latest steam turbine installations that it does not seem likely to grow in favor. The gas turbine, with its promise of still higher efficiencies, has been just below the horizon for several years. Very recently that daring conception, the mercury turbine,

has passed from theory to actuality and, among the milestones of progress, may be set as far in advance of the steam turbine as the latter is beyond the reciprocating engine. It permits the generation of 50 per cent more power from a pound of coal than has been possible heretofore.

The growth of the electrical industries is proceeding at an extraordinary rate, and the developments now under way must profoundly influence industrial and social conditions in the immediate future. It is estimated that the energy generated in central stations will triple in the next ten years, and that in the course of that decade the people of the country will spend twenty billion dollars for electric service in homes, farms, factories, and mines. In the Pacific Coast states, installed primary power increased 540 per cent from 1899 to 1919, and over a million horsepower is now under development in California. The Southern California Edison Company is sending 220,000volt current over its Big Creek line, and it has become possible to deliver power four hundred miles or more with good efficiency. While the superpower zone on the Atlantic seaboard is still the dream of engineers, plans have been developed for a single electric superpower system to cover the entire country and southern Canada.

Voltages as high as two million above ground are now being dealt with experimentally. In the laboratory, electricians in overalls are usurping the more terrible functions of Jove, and insulation engineers are busy with new means of harnessing the lightning. An X-ray tube with fifteen times the X-ray energy of the average tube in use is now available to those who are endeavoring to probe the mystery of the ultimate structure of matter. In the alloy industries the electric furnace is firmly established, while electric

steel has proved its superiority for many special uses. Greatly improved electric lamps are stimulating the demand for better illumination in homes, offices, and factories. The actor no longer monopolizes the spotlight. Its protective glare now focuses upon the semaphoric traffic-cop. The flood lighting of railroad yards is becoming common, and there is a distinct trend toward high-intensity lighting in many cities, there being in some instances a fifteenfold increase in light-intensity in business districts.

Whether the moving picture will develop or retrograde is not for one who has never seen Hollywood to say. The moving-picture van, which, to larboard, starboard, and astern, compels attention to the virtues of toasted chewing-gum or the lasting flavor of cigarettes, has arrived and is as welcome as a peripatetic billboard. We are soon to become familiar with the pallophotophone. Its symphonic name will from most of the community conceal the poetic fact that it is a moving picture whose characters talk. No longer is it necessary for our statesmen to tour the country. Their fences may be mended in the studio, and their constituents may simultaneously, in thousands of communities, view the candidate in a six-foot close-up as his argument is projected in a voice of twenty horsepower. It will handicap the would-be senator who looks like a third-class postmaster.

It would be interesting, but quite inconclusive, to allow one's self to speculate upon the reactions which our civilization is ultimately to make to the marvels that are resulting from the discovery of the Herzian waves. The sales of radio equipment reached a total of $150,000,000 last year and are expected to double in 1924. The earth has become a whispering gallery, and the ocean has lost its solitude. The

farm is no longer isolated, and the newspapers, the theatres, and the pulpit have a new competitor.

VI

Man is no longer bound to the earth. He has achieved a three-dimensional existence. Since 1920 our transcontinental mail service has covered nearly two million miles a year. It has handled in all nearly a million ton-miles of mail. In England, during the past two and a half years, there was only one accident involving serious injury to a passenger, for 5,000,000 miles flown. In a single month 2600 passengers have been carried by the London-Paris route. It is now possible to fly from Vienna to Paris in ten hours and from Strasbourg to Constantinople in thirty hours.

But the airplane is available not only for the transport of passengers and mail. Its operating-costs are already low enough to permit its use for carrying costly, perishable, or urgently needed goods, and there is probability of an early development of an aerialexpress service in this country. Except as a part of the military establishment, the airplane has, in Europe, been regarded chiefly as an instrument of foreign policy and used to tie together far-flung portions of empire and distant but friendly states. French lines trend toward Morocco, and the French aspire to establish regular service between Dakar, in Africa, and Brazil. The British are working toward Egypt, India, Australia. Meanwhile, the general public keeps its feet on the ground and confines its aerial activities to the reading of sky-writing. The confidence of that public in the safety and regularity of aerial transport must be secured before any great commercial development may be expected. The situation is not unlike that which

confronted the builders of transcontinental railroads in the United States and Canada. The same faith and vision are required to develop and operate airplane lines on the large scale.

For long-distance travel overseas the airship will doubtless prove more available than the airplane. It is easily capable of carrying a good commercial load three or four thousand miles, at a speed of a mile a minute. Its safety is, of course, immeasurably increased by inflation with nonexplosive helium, of which, Dr. Moore claims, there is enough available in the United States to fill and maintain two hundred airships of the size of the Shenandoah. He foresees ships of twice that size, carrying a fuel supply adequate for the trip to Europe and return. The British are turning to airships for the projected London-Australia service, and on overseas journeys generally it seems probable that a passenger rate of twenty dollars a day plus seven-cent mileage can be maintained.

The automobile, which has so profoundly influenced social and economic conditions in conditions in this country within. twenty years, is approaching standardization, and distinct intimations now appear that the period of great expansion is drawing to a close. With more than 13,000,000 cars and trucks now on our roads, there is, nevertheless, an annual demand for about 3,500,000 more. The replacement demand will soon equal present production. Our investment in motor transportation is approaching that in our railroads, and it is in property subject to peculiarly heavy depreciation. The economists and financiers have looked with apprehension upon these vast expenditures, and the fact that seventy per cent of all cars sold are being bought on the installment plan is not indicative of the highest wisdom in our domestic economy. Nevertheless, we

grow richer as a nation, and as we have acquired cars the national income has doubled and savings-bank deposits have greatly increased.

Rail shipments for less than forty miles are said to be carried at a loss, and within this zone transportation by truck is far more expeditious. An increasing volume of short-haul business will, therefore, be diverted to trucks. Freight terminals are likely to be removed beyond congested city limits, and delivery of package freight made expeditiously by motor trucks. In Cincinnati motorized-freight terminals have in one year released 66,000 cars for main-line service, saved 300,000 switching cuts, and advanced freight movement fifty-two hours.

VII

Our industries are entering upon a long period of super-competition, the duration of which will in large measure be determined by conditions in Europe or our own relations to them. As foreign markets are restricted, competition at home will be intensified. As the pressure increases, our manufacturers will be forced to rely more and more generally upon the scientific method for the control of materials and processes and to support intensive research as the basis for industrial development. We may hope to see the stupendous wastes which accompany our present operations minimized, and resources, now neglected, utilized to great advantage. Such abundant metals as beryllium, hafnium, calcium, and magnesium will be utilized. Our wastes in cereal straw will be turned to account. The lumberman will be brought to realize that he is leaving behind or burning up greater values than he markets. Pure iron, bright as silver and little subject to corrosion, will be available for a thousand uses.

Still there remains the problem of distribution, which is perhaps the greatest problem with which our industry is confronted. It seems to be approaching a solution in the activities and success of great corporations that function as distributing agencies. Sales of single mail-order houses approximate $200,000,000 a year. One grocery company with 8500 stores had a turnover, in 1922, of $247,000,000. Last year $193,000,000 worth of goods, in fiveand ten-cent units, were sold by a single organization, and a survey of its stock is a revelation of the accomplishment of our manufacturers in low-priced production. Chain drug-stores are distributing agencies for books, stationery, aluminum ware, confectionery, and dolls and will fill prescriptions, if you can find the proper counter. For radio equipment you may go to chain cigar-stores. In short, it is beginning to be recognized that retail distribution is a function of organization rather than of product.

During the last fifty years science and invention have led us further and further from the world that was; deeper and deeper into a new environment. The process of change has been so rapid that readjustment has been difficult. Yet readjust ourselves we must, and prepare for new adjustments. Our dealings with Nature in the past have been by crude and clumsy methods. The chemistry of the laboratory is put to blush by that of the plant cell. We face the problems of the future with a new knowledge of the ultimate structure of matter, derived from radium, atomic spectra, and the X-rays. What has gone before is mere earnest of the future. We may confidently depend on science to provide the foundation for a better social structure, if we can prevail upon ourselves to build thereon in a different frame of mind.

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