The Daily News WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30. TO-DAY!

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 311, 30 December 1908, Page 2

The Daily News WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30. TO-DAY!

Some fifty years have passed since it was announced to a surprised world that a machine had been invented to' obviate the dreary labor of sewing by hand. When the various movements of till! hand ami lingers necessary to accomplish a line of sewing are considered, the world is to be excused for doubting tile -possibility of such an achievement. Tailors immediately saw ill the possibility of siu'li an accomplishment tile utter and complete ruination of their trade. To-day, except in the very poorest homes, every family has its machine. Again, when pne considers the various movements of til'; hand and lingers necessary to write, an ordinary letter with the pell, the world is to he once more excused for doubting the possibility of inventing a machine to do the work not only ipiieker, but cleaner ami better in every sense. Now in every ollice in connection with every business whore there is much correspondence,' there is the typewriter. Both the sewI iug machine and the typewriter are really most ingenious contrivances, and

if the world lias ceased to wonder at | them it is because they have become so cuiuiuon - Mu-lt ( very day alVairs-that. human thought, impatient, has passed on to other tilings. At the time of the Crimean war, when "news of the events which were occurring 011 the other side of the globe reached the colonics some three months after they Had passed into history, grave men were shaking their wise heads over the question as to whether it was within the bounds of human possibility that communication with Australia could even be accomplished jvithin forty days. To-day, every part of the civilised world is bound by electric cables into one mass. Thirty-live years ago the telephone was unknown. The time is shortly coming when telephonic communication will be regarded as an absolutely indispensable adjunct to every home. It would be so 'now, but for the appearance of the poles, straining and bending—sometimes breaking—beneath the weight of the overhead wires. Under present conditions the State is not encouraging the dissemination of telephonic advantages; but all that will be changed when the wire difficulty lias been overcome—as overcome it must be. The telephone must be made cheaper so as to allow of its introduction into every home. Down in Wellington harbor the musing visitor from Taranaki will see in the hulks some specimens of the stump, ■bluff-bow-ed, wind-blown craft in which bis enterprising father to this land of loveliness came some fifty or sixty years ago. Today, they are building ships of fifty and sixty thousand tons. 11l short, the building of mighty vessels seems to be only restricted by Hit depth of the water of the sea. 11l length and breadth the sea is free, but the shallow water of our harbors place.' a limit in depth. To-day, the large ships that visit our shores have to gi hunting round the coast for cargo; but in the days fast drawing near, when our, population and our production hav< increased considerably, our children wil behold ships of the tonnage of whiel we read and are told. In the days oj the Stevensons, not so very long ago one remembers the fighting of the private individual with his'rights derivec by inheritance—nevertheless niankint achieved the railway. Now the iror road penetrates into nearly every coiner of the earth of any value Although there is talk of constructing vast water reservoirs for the purpose 01 generating electricity with the view 0: attaining cheaper, speedier and bettci working of railway systems, one begins to question whether the railway lia; not already served its purpose. Steven son never dreamed of such an appure-.it ly trilling thing as the motor car enter ing into his great, far-reaching scheme Along a common road the motor eai can beat the locomotive in speed; pill the petrol on the rails and see what speed and power can lie attained. Hofl long ago is it since the velocipede, de veloping into the bicycle, made its ap pearanceV Now, too, the bicycle is pe trol propelled. On the 24th of tlii: month, in the city of Wellington, m less than .UltIS was taken in tramway fares, representing the carriage of m fewer than 217,1120 persons over a pennj section, an achievement perfectly won derful when the size of the city is con sidered. It is not the money; it is tin perfectly safe transmission of such 1 number lof people for long distances Lastly, there is ballooning, the llyinj machine, the aeroplane, a tiling of yes terday, now in its infancy. But, why proceed! Indeed, there is no end U the mighty things that man hm wrought, the more than mighty U which he has given hi* thought. Thrci hundred years ago, almost to a day Kngland's greatest poet said somethinj to this eflect: "Oh, what a piece 0 work is man . . how infinite in reasoi . . in apprehension like a god." Thrci hundred years is a very long time What would Shakespeare say if hi could see .Man as he is to-dayV