The Unity and Application of Art 



We may now look upon this means of communication as 

 another modern miracle but who knows what the next age 

 or ages of our civilization may bring forth? It may be pos- 

 sible that the future shall bring forth a delicate sensitive 

 instrument that can be carried in a pocket of one's clothing 

 the same as a watch is now carried, and by the use of which 

 individual communication maybe carried on without the con- 

 necting wires now necessary with the regular telephone. 



A fire is burning in the fireplace. A blue blaze is racing 

 over an asbestos grate. There is no smoke and the fuel is 

 neither wood, coke nor coal, but instead, it is natural gas, 

 the only perfect fuel known to our civilization. The gas is 

 coming from the hidden recesses of the earth's rocks some, 

 perhaps, a mile in depth beneath the surface of the earth. 

 It may be coming from a hundred wells or more and from a 

 distance of a thousand miles away. It is being transported 

 through iron pipes to the place of its consumption. If the 

 gas fields are reasonably close, it is transporting itself to 

 market in an effort to expand. This is the one fuel that 

 furnishes instant heat. Thousands of human lives have been 

 offered as a sacrifice in discovering how to reduce to posses- 

 sion, use and control this valuable fuel. But what you see 

 burning is, in many cases, only a residue product. The gaso- 

 line content in most cases has been extracted from this gas 

 before it has reached the burner tips in the fireplace before 

 you. Hundreds of thousands of people are engaged in the 

 industry that makes it possible for the furnishing of this 

 fuel in this home. The first spark of fire struck from a piece 

 of flint by our primitive ancestors that started combustion 



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