Out of the Dark

Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 40, 15 April 1932, Page 3

Out of the Dark

: -- "The Story of the Evolution of Communication -- That is History"’

a In the light of our past achievements we face the future with confidence, and reiterate our unshakable belief that out of the present clash and turmoil there will emerge a civilisation richer than any the world has ever seen; a civilisation based on the intelligent co-operation of free peoplcs who have risen superior to the prejudices of colour, race and creed.

FA Broadcast Talk by

G.

LAWN

M.

A

From 3YA

(NE of the most outY4 standing: characteristics of modern society is the growth of industrial specialisation, based on a world-wide interchange of

goods and services. A hundred years ago the term. "international relations,’ would arouse little interest ‘in the minds of most people outside of the small group of diplomats whose business concerned the limited field of foreign policy. People thought in terms of local politics and local interests. Their social and economic problems

hardly extended beyond the boundaries of the county in which they lived.: What happened in far distant parts of the world seemed of little importance to their daily lives. To-day all this is changed. One of the most frequently-used words in modern economic literature is the term, "international." Hundreds of books are being published dealing specifically with international problems. Our daily newspapers stress the events that are taking place in other parts of the world, and this news is eagerly read by millions of people, because they know that these events have a real, practical bearing on_ their every-day lives. We have, as it were, stepped from a narrowly-limited national economy to a world economy, and our very existence is dependent on the smooth working of international institutions. Few of us realise how revolutionary has been the economic change that has taken place during the past century. Fosdick, in his "Old Savage in the New Civilisation," describes the change in these words: "What was the world like in 1822? In all America, in all Europe, there was not a railroad, nor a telephone, nor a telegraph. The steamboat was just beginning to win its way. Travel was a painful and precarious undertaking with the result that most people stayed home, living

and dying where they were born. "There were no electric lights, no sewing machines; no ‘bathtubs, no furnaces, no hot-water taps,

no asphalt or macadam pavement, no plumbing, no sewer systems-in fact, none of the conveniences which have become an accepted part of our life to-day . . . a world without matches, gas or coal ranges, gramophones, refrigerators, canned food, rubber goods, parcels-post, money-orders, bicycles, cigarettes, typewriters, or alarm clocks.

"People lived for the most part simply and quietly, engaged in a routine of work from which, in generations, there had been but little variation. Indeed from the days of Rameses II and Moses down to the days of our. grandfathers amazingly few fundamental changes occurred in the material existence of common people. ¢é67FARANSPORT and communication were no more rapid a century ago than they were with the ancient Egyptians. Nothing swifter than a horse was known either. to Nebuchadnezzar or Thomas Jefferson. A letter sent by Napoleon from Paris to Rome took as long to deliver as one sent by Julius Caesar from Rome to Paris. The farmers in the United States used largely the same methods and the same instruments that. were used in the days of Augustus. "And this was only a hundred years ago! Between that time and this has occurred the mightiest revolution in history. It has completely changed the whole complex of human life. It has fundamentally altered our daily habits ; it has not only modified (Continued on page 22.),

Out of the Dark (Continued from page 3.) our environment, but has thoroughly revolutionised it. Since the days of Assyria and Babylon nothing has occurred which has so completely and in so short a time changed the method and manner of living of the human race as the mechanical revolution of the nineteenth century. Our great-grandparents would find themselves far more at home in the world of the Venerable Bede or of Alfred the Great than they would in the world we occupy to-day. Revolution in Methods, URING the past century the revolutions in industrial methods, in scientific knowledge, in commercial and financial organisation have enormously increased man’s knowledge of natural resources and his power to transform them into things that minister to his comfort and well-being. The nineteenth century witnessed the epening-up of the great grasslands of the world, the great plains of the temperate zones-in Canada, United States, Argentine and Australia. The application of steam power to ocean and land transport, the construction of railways into continental interiors, the provision of adequate water supplies by well-drilling appliances, the invention of harvesting machinery, and the use of refrigeration have brought into the food supplies of the world rich stores of grain, dairy produce, and meat from plains that were not long ago sparsely inhabited by nomadie tribes. The rapid economic growth of the United States of America is an outstanding example of this progress. [HE needs of industrial counfries have led, during more recent years, to the growing importance of tropical products, such as vegetable oils and rubber, and the ever-growing necessity of finding markets for manufactured goods has brought into prominence the value of tropical Tegions as suppliers of essential -raw materials and as buyers of finished goods. The restless energy of enterprising people from the more advanced industrial nations of Europe has unlocked the vast potentialities of the Tropics. Transport obstacles have been overcome, swamps drained, insect and animal pests and human diseases conquered, agricultural methods improved, economic security provided by new forms of political control and by effective financial and commercial organisation so that countries for centuries inhabited by savage tribes are becoming important factors in world commerce, In some of these countries changes that took centuries to accomplish in Burope are being produced in a decade or SO, revolutionary changes in traditional customs and standards of living. Recent years have seen the rising tide of

industrialisation, of large-scale production by factory methods, spread into countries that had been suppliers of raw materials and profitable markets: for the products of the factories of Western Hurope. Difficult problems of shifting markets, of new competitors, of readjustment of industrial life, are arising unexpectedly in many countries, and new social, political, and commercial policies have to be formulated to meet thexe changing conditions. Severe strains are thus placed upon the machinery of economic control, and the ability of governing bodies to adjust themselves to these stresses is being tested to the utmost. (To be Continued.)