190 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1944 
of living. Industry can be the great motive power in the solution of 
these problems. The future of every American home and family 
depends upon it. Therefore, it is imperative that after victory is 
achieved on the battlefields, American industry devote the same all- 
out efforts to the peace that it devoted to the war. There can be no 
let-down. The problems of peace will be of great magnitude. After 
the devastation of war, mankind will be called upon to win the peace 
and to make that peace secure with happiness for all people. If in- 
dustrial statesmanship fails in this great opportunity, then the ap- 
proach to the postwar problems necessarily will be political instead 
of economic. 
America’s cultivation of science has proved the Nation’s salvation 
in modern warfare. It must not be otherwise in peace. Pioneering 
and research create wealth and employment. 
In considering opportunities for employment after the war we must 
lift our sights to the skies. Man, long confined in his activities to 
the surface of the earth and beneath the ground, now finds that the 
air is a new dimension, offering new adventures and pioneering by 
a new generation. The air is a universal chemical and physical lab- 
oratory in which essential elements for life on earth are created. 
Nature herself makes unlimited use of celestial space for trans- 
mission of light and heat from the sun. Only in recent years has 
man learned to use the air. Only now is he beginning to discover 
its tremendous potentialities. Literally out of thin air, chemists are 
creating new products, physicists are building new services, while 
man is talking on unseen waves and flying on invisible beams. 
On the surface of the earth, ships and railroads, automobiles and 
industrial machines have created millions of jobs. Underground 
coal, oil, and minerals provide employment for other millions. Above 
the earth aviation and radio, electronics and television can open the 
way for new opportunities in re-employment of war workers and for 
the millions of men and women who will return from service. 
It is estimated that 10,000,000 jobs which did not exist in 1940 must 
be found to solve the postwar problem of employment. One great 
hope in helping to meet this unprecedented challenge will be found in 
the fertile and unexplored frontiers of space. Science, offering new 
incentives, is beckoning capital to venture into the open skies. We 
are challenged to look upward to our future. 
Horace Greeley, if here today, might say, “Go up, young man, go 
up and grow up in space.” There, lies the unfathomed “West” of this 
century, with no last frontier; there, lies a vast wilderness rich in 
resources, opportunities, and adventure. The “Forty-niners” of the 
present decade will be prospectors in research. They will travel 
through the air to stake their claims to fame, fortune, and freedom. 
