164 THE LURE OF THE LAND 



because the air has not been conquered. A few years 

 ago the possibility of flying through the air was looked 

 upon as a mere vision. " Darius Green and his flying 

 machine " were held up for the amusement of the rising 

 generation rather than its instruction. Even as late as 

 the time of Professor Langley, the great scientist who 

 seriously devoted himself to the problem of flying 

 through the air, scientific and practical men looked 

 upon it as a mere vagary of the imagination. Now 

 the air has been conquered in so far as navigation is 

 concerned. While the dangers are still imminent, the 

 thing itself has been accomplished. 



The true conquest of the air, however, is not by the 

 balloon, nor the aeroplane; it is in harnessing the air 

 to do the will of the people. When the mechanical 

 difficulties have been surmounted, as human ingenuity 

 can readily accomplish, and when the methods of man- 

 ufacture have been so perfected as to bring the machines 

 within the power of the ordinary well-to-do farmer, we 

 may expect to see great changes and great benefits. 

 Already steam and gasoline and coal oil are to some ex- 

 tent supplementing the ox, the horse and the mule as 

 a means of farm labor, and especially of farm traction. 

 When we view the victories which electricity has won 

 as a moving agent in cities and on suburban lines of 

 railway, and in the conquest of the roads by the motor 

 car, we are not wise to place any limit to what it may 

 accomplish on the farm. It is not a prophecy; it is 

 only a statement of the thing which is certainly about 

 to be, to look only a few years ahead and see the electric 

 turbine a part of every farm equipment as much as a 

 mowing machine and a gang plow are to-day. 



In the Electrical Review of August 8, 1913, London, 

 is an account of an electrical turbine system estab- 



