588 CIVIL ENGINEERING 



lished in rural districts, thus requiring shorter hauls for dairy and 

 agricultural supplies and creating local markets for many products. 

 The utilization of waterfalls for the generation and transmission 

 of power to long distances will aid in this effort to distribute the 

 laboring classes to their manifest advantage. 



So great is the traffic on the municipal lines that the patronage 

 in many cities exceeds 300 times the total population, per annum, 

 which at times greatly surpasses the capacity of all the cars in the 

 service. There is apparently no relief in sight, excepting the addi- 

 tion of a double deck to the elevated railroads or the introduction 

 of a series of continuously moving sidewalks having different rela- 

 tive velocities, which latter method has been frequently proposed 

 but appears to have many disadvantages, especially in the require- 

 ments for space, cost, and freedom from danger and noise. 



So long, therefore, as movement is confined to the surface, ele- 

 vated, or underground roads, the difficulties of handling the traffic 

 must increase in a very rapid ratio unless the population can be 

 confined to smaller local centres or be removed from the surface 

 altogether. This desideratum has given rise to many efforts to con- 

 struct some practical device for aerial navigation, and thus it happens 

 that there is still a medium into which man's ambition would lead 

 him, like Icarus, to soar, were it possible to find some antidote for 

 gravity. 



Much progress has, however, been made in the construction of 

 dirigible balloons and special forms of captive kites, which give 

 promise of becoming of commercial value as means of communi- 

 cation and for collecting data, in this rarer medium. It is there- 

 fore a part of the laudable purpose of the management of this Ex- 

 position to encourage this effort by the awarding of large premiums 

 for the most successful practical efforts. The problem is most allur- 

 ing because of the manifest advantages to result from its fruition. 

 Instead of having to improve waterways, or to build railways and 

 highways at enormous cost for construction and maintenance, the 

 way would be free to all. There would be no bridges, tunnels, toll- 

 gates, sand-bars, reefs, or other obstacles to the ready interchange 

 of commerce. No custom-houses, forts, or frontiers. Commercial and 

 military barriers would be obliterated and wars would soon be- 

 come a memory. Were the inhabitants of the earth able to "move 

 like an army of locusts with banners," seeking the garden-spots of 

 the globe, what would become of the Chinese Exclusion Act or the 

 laws restricting pauper immigration? Then would it appear that 

 "the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof, the world and they 

 that dwell therein;" for man could seek his own environments much 

 better, and more readily secure the opportunity to earn his bread 



