A CENTURY HENCE

Shannon News, 2 May 1924, Page 4

A CENTURY HENCE

What the philosopher’s stpne was to a former age electricity is to our own. There is no confuting prophet who uses its magic name in his visionary tales of the future. That is one advantage of our not yet having discovered what precisely electricity is. Its potentialities are unbounded, and it i 3 no surprise, therefore, to learn from our New York correspondent that Dr. Steinmetz, an American man of science engaged in electrcial research work has been indulging in the prediction that electricity is to bring j about an “amazing transformation of, human life.” Looking into the future at ,-o comparatively short a peviod as a century hence, he sees man labouring do more than four hours a day. That has the sound of a safe prophecy, but the next sentence is far otherwise. “Another century,” we are assured, “will solve all the problems that now vex the inhabitants, of the earth.” The good scientist must not, of course, be taken too literally, We are not to assume that such problems as that presented by the Baconian theory of the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays will be solved by electricity any more than will the problem of why love grows cold. Dr. Steinmetz is thinking of material things only. He foresees that, our grandchildren, looking back on our own day, wil be more amazed at our helplessness in the struggle for advancement than we are looking back on the “almost/ primitive days when the first steamboat appeared”’ That is stimulating talk, though we protest that; an age which has Dr. Steinmetz for its counsellor must hot be named helpless. When it comes tQ' details we learn that, in that day, the skies will be clear of smoke and the streets free from refuse. That ( is a little lacking' in the glow of'prophetic fire, but stamps the doctor as a practical man. He needs that we should think of him so, for consider how- this sanitary reform is to come about. If the nations, he says, spent as much energy in linking up means of communication with the inhabitants; of Mars as they did in prosecuting the war, it is not impossible the plan; would succeed. It is not for us to hint that there might be more

direct methods of applying elpctrcity to -the world’s improvement, or that communication with Mars might conceivably be achieved without electricity at all. However, the, doctor himself speaks highly of “co-opera-tive jhuman. effort.” It certainly has a good record of beneficent achievement behind it, inspired for the most part by that philosophy of Christianity to the imperfect grasp of which Dr. Steinmetz attributes the continuance; of wars. But with Christian philosophy, Martians, and electricity .marshalled by Dr. Steinmetz, who will doubt the revolution to come?