RELATIONS OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING 615 



and telephone have enormously increased the range of mental 

 influence. Even now the fetters of thought are closing upon the arms 

 of the ocean, and wireless telegraphy promises in time to extend the 

 transfer of ideas to the uttermost distances of the sea. The effect is 

 multifold. The tendency is always for the best intelligence to have its 

 influence most widely distributed, considering the best as that which 

 the community esteems best at the time; so that the extension of 

 the range of mental influence always tends for the benefit of the many 

 and the selection of the fittest. The consciousness of the individual 

 being able to influence his neighbors at any distance on the planet 

 gives him greater confidence in the success of undertakings dependent 

 for their effect upon widespread cooperation. The consciousness of 

 the individual that he is always within the sphere of influence of his 

 leader exerts a great psychological supporting influence in times of 

 difficulty and doubt. It is equivalent to a bridging over of the 

 distance between the strong and the weak. Any one who has ever 

 received from land a telegram when far out at sea, either by wireless 

 telegraphy, or by a lifted submarine cable, will testify to the intensity 

 of this psychological influence. 



According to the census returns of 1902 the number of telegrams 

 forwarded commercially during that year in the United States was 

 91,650,000; or 1.2 telegrams per annum per head of population, at an 

 average cost per message of 31.8 cents. In the same year the number 

 of reported telephonic conversations in the United States was nearly 

 4950 millions, or 65 per head of population, at an average cost per 

 conversation of 1.65 cents. 



Along with the swift and extended radius of thought that electrical 

 engineering offers, by the mutual relations of immaterial mentality 

 and the immaterial ether, there is also necessarily involved a reduc- 

 tion of psychological restraint and an extension of psychological 

 freedom. A part at least of the discomfort of human beings often arises 

 from a disconformity between their modes of thought and of their 

 mental relations to those of the individuals surrounding them. 

 Occasionally an individual who is psychologically ill-adjusted to his 

 environment, and who is therefore ineffective in his cooperation with 

 it, may subsequently become more usefully effective in response to 

 a changed mental environment. The greater and swifter the radius 

 of thought activity under the influence of engineering methods, the 

 greater the stimulation to migration that leads from a lesser to a 

 greater harmony of adjustment between the internal and external 

 mental activities of the individual, to the increase of general comfort 

 and well-being. The segregation of associable mental activities is 

 simplified and rendered frictionless by whatever extends the rate and 

 range of ideas. 



In its moral effect upon the community at large, electrical engineer- 



