XVlll. PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



turning lathes into factories ceases to exist. The cost 

 of carriage of goods is somewhat greater, but where cheap 

 electricity is supplied, it is found that the worker much 

 prefers the independent life at home to the fixed hours 

 of the factory. The cost of the machinery has proved 

 no bar, as makers have shown themselves only too willing 

 to advance them on the time-payment system. Cheap 

 electrical supply would soon give us a sturdy independent 

 class of home workers. 



Electrification of trains would, of course, follow with 

 an enormous saving in cost of haulage, in cleaning of carriages 

 and in waste of passengers' clothes. 



If such a cheap source of power were available in Bris- 

 bane, it would assuredly straightway become the greatest 

 manufacturing city in Australasia. The manufacturer 

 here, with the cheap power, would undersell his rivals 

 elsewhere who used power a^ about 6 or 10 times the cost; 

 while ore smelting, which is becoming every day more and 

 more electrical, would certainly make its home here. 



And to think that all this enormous gain in cleanliness, 

 in convenience, in time, in money, would cost us, as a 

 community, less than nothing — -that by making the change 

 we would save money. 



This great saving of coal and labour can, of course, 

 only be done by the community, that is, by the Government 

 — -no private trading company should or could get the 

 necessary monopoly, probably no one else could raise the 

 necessary capital to effect the change. It would mean 

 buying up several private interests at present supplying 

 some of our wants, probably not more than five companies, 

 but the enormous savings to be made and the gain other- 

 wise would make it a very profitable matter indeed to buy 

 each of these interests at an honest price. There seems a 

 tendency nowadays to confiscate private interests by tax- 

 ation or by Government competition. Where such interests 

 have been honestly acquired and are honestly serving the 

 public as they are in Brisbane, no other course should be 

 adopted than honestly buying them back. Competition 

 by the Government would virtually mean confiscation. 

 And the scheme is no wild Utopian idea — -it requires no new 

 discoveries, no new inventions, scarcely any new laws. 

 In November, 1910, the President of the Society of 



