The Daily News. TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 1912. MANY INVENTIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 296, 11 June 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 1912. MANY INVENTIONS.

The ways of science are more wonderful than the three things which puzzled Job —the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship upon the sea, and the way of a man with a maid. If it were possible to put the world back for a I couple of hundred years, and carry with it the knowledge of to-day, the penalties for witchcraft would be abnormal. Mr. H. G. Wells, some years ago, wrote an Interesting etory concerning racial and scientific development, in which he drew ft vivid and gruesome picture of the degeneration which would ensue as a result of the time and labor-saving appliances of a modern age. He pictured the race as a withered and desuetude remnant of a people who were once virile and vigorous through pure stress of circumstance. In a word he pictured an eft'ete and wilted humanity which lay upon its back and pressed buttons. If it wanted spring onions it press the spring onion button at its elbow, and if it wanted an early copy of the Daily News it was automatically supplied through Unothcr key of an elaborate keyboard. In his fin de siecle estimate of the next century mankind was put to bed by machinery, dressed automatically and fed in tabloid form, like any ordinary stead en* gine, through a doorway in the most important part of his anatomy. The result was, of course, that with a cessation of individual labor there came a physical deterioration in the race which resulted in a nation of dwarfs, who, while abnormally acute mentally, were physically incapacitated from the daily routine which is so dear to the hearts of a poor humanity, which still loves to tread its own blankets and milk its own cows by hand. But many inventions have not yet brought us to this parlous stage. We fly through the air, we milk our cows automatically, we throw shells into the camps of our enemies at a range of many miles, and we have practically obliterated time and space by the help of that handmaiden, electricity. But the race remains vigorous and sturdy, simply because these many labor-saving appliances call for both mental and physical energy in their construction, When

the machine loom supplanted the old method of hand-weaving it was generally believed that the end of the world had come so far as the weavers were concerned, for when one machine did the work of ten men it was argued, with ■ 'ore than a show of logic, that there ■;>uld be no work for the other nine men. The same theory was applied to the - iibstitution of the linotype for the compositor. But history has shown that no matter how industry is cut up for closer settlement, the work of construction always equalises the labor that has been supplanted. It simply means that where a man is stopped from making bricks by the advent of machinery he can find an outlet for his industry ,by building culverts with the extra bricks that are made. Labor-saving appliances, in fact, are not the sowing of tares in our industrial wheat by our enemies; they are rather a condensation of energy along perfectly legitimate lines. But the "manyinventions" of the day must be properly safe-guarded if they are to be effective. One does not allow children to play with firearms, and the decision of the Government to keep sole control of wireless telegraphy in the Dominion is a supremely wise one. This particular phase in the annihilation of space, as Cherokee Sam would have said, is "sure the limit," and is a miracle even in an age of miracles. The ordinary person—and there are a heap of ordinary persons in the world—accepts it just as he accepts the steam-engme, and the telephone and the areoplane and other modern mysteries of an age that is essentially scientific. But this tossing of messages through the air has been met by a curious eventuality. The air is no man's land, and any person who cares to stretch out a long arm and take a catch in the slips that was not meant for him has regarded this as perfectly within his rights. This interception of messages, however, if it were permitted, would simply mean discounting the value of wireless installations to almost a vanishing point. The Dominion has decided to erect such stations at various points for the purpose of safeguarding life and commerce at sea, and, until such time as science can devise a means of insuring the privacy of messages the Government is bound, in common fairness, to assume control of this particular mechanism. The tapping of the Titanic's messages by amateurs is a quite sufficient excuse for this attitude, for while nobody wishes to discourage amateur enterprise in the field of science it must be apparent that there are time 3 and circumstances when this irresponsible ambition may be so applied as to seriously interfere with more legitimate enterprise.