WELLINGTON NEWS

Hokitika Guardian, 16 March 1928, Page 4

WELLINGTON NEWS

iIY DRO-ELECTRIC DEVELOPMENT. (Special to “ Guardian WELLINGTON, March. 14. rite effects of hydro-electric development are hound to he far-reaching. New Zealanders are a home-producing and home-loving people since the heart of a home is the wife and mother, the most compelling environment is con tained in the home. But New Zealanders’ homes are peculiar in due particular. We have a generally beautiful climate and our houses are set mid scenes which are invitations to an out-of-doors existence; but we are unable as yet to permit oiir wives and mothers to be other than house slaves. Modern New Zealand young women possibly because the late war put so many outworn traditions upon the scrap-heap, or as the phsyeological result of universal suffrage, has made up her mind to end such degrading conditions if at all possible. She is learning that hydro-electricity brought into the home makes a great difference. It gives her light at command without the daily lamp-trimming, an iron that permits ironing to be done in comiort on the hottest days, a range ami cooking implements which are and limy remain clean and yet efficient, comfort and radiant heat when and where required without the laying-in and stoking of fires and the cleaning of grates, a kettle actually on llm afternoon tea table, a toaster on the breakfast table, a floor sweeper, a washing machine and still other aids might lio had and will be found to lighten Ivor household labour. This is one instance of the forces of physical environment and loads to the ultimate emancipation of women. So tar as domestic assistance goes there remain still many Itazurds we must clear before the practical, employment of electricity is realised. These niiiv he grouped under two heads —Not all articles now to be obtained are practical from a colonial point of view, and the present method of doling electric power out by the unit, when it might he poured out by the kilowatt, are most unsatisfactory, both Irnm t.ie consumers’ and suppliers’ point ol view. The manager of the lactory rightly considers his own work ol organisation as one of the most important functions in the concern, but a manager who rates iiis own efforts as more valuable than any manual labour is most inconsistent if lie does not employ every means and ever seeks out newer and better means to lighten the use ol merely muscular effort. The unskilled labourer is the most expensive unit in ;i factory. lie limy not be eliminated entirely, but a factory cannot be run efficiently if iimii-lmmlling and muscular effort as a part of the work' is not reduced to its economic minimum. There is no form of power which is more readily or more universally applicable to industrial operations than electricity and it is the factory manager's economic duty to install electricity whenever possible. Jdis competitors will drive him to it. The use of electricity in industry cannot take man all the way along the road to happiness, butHt can help very materially. Hydro-electric power, or power in anv readily accessible form, cannot fail to have a very great influence upon life in any country, and most notably must this influence be felt in a new and young country like New Zealand. It is power; even as the burning coal, the flowing stream, the steady wind or the muscles of the horse or ox are power. Li the past the uor.se was man’s great friend, but in the future bis greatest help, his most willing servant, will be the more inanimate, more powerful, and more tireless slave represented by hydro-electrie power. Little by little the honie will be che brighter and cleaner because of the use of eleetrii power.