IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 29 



Over one million miles of telephonic wires have already- 

 been strung in onr own country. Boston, a typical city, 

 measures its electric nerves at a total of one hundred .and 

 seventy million feet, and the radius of audible speech 

 from it reached a year since, according to lies, to Duluth, 

 Omaha, Kansas City, Little Rock and Montgomery. 



Note the saving of time and energy thus accomplished. 

 Without leaving his desk the manager of a business is in 

 instant communication with all his employes, and with 

 the business enterprises in his own and other cities. The 

 captains of industry are thus able to command armies of 

 a size unthought of a few decades since. So accurate and 

 instant are the new motor and sensory nerves that the oil 

 refineries, the copper mines, the steel mills, almost any 

 industry that may be mentioned, can be regimented under 

 one control, and an industrial revolution is accomplishing 

 before our eyes. 



The electric wire, with the fast mail and the newspaper, 

 flash the news of the world throughout all civilized coun- 

 tries. When our army attacks Santiago or marches on 

 Pekin, the public becomes impatient of even the interval 

 between the morning and the afternoon paper. On the night 

 of a national election the American public listens to the 

 count of votes in every city and in every state. The new 

 discovery of science, the new mechanical process, the new 

 remedy for disease, are communicated without delay to 

 the entire world. In commerce local prices seek the level 

 of the world market, and the entire distributing system is 

 as effectively controlled as are the capillaries of the animal 

 body by the clutches of the nerves. In a theatre vast 

 as the whole earth we look down on the stage, upon which 

 is played the never ending drama of current history. 



In a still larger sphere the new organ of communication 

 has a reflex on civilization. It makes possible self-gov- 

 erning communities, stretching from the Atlantic to the 

 Pacific. Bringing Washington face to face with London, 

 Paris and Berlin, and the other capitals of Europe, it 

 enables the great powders of two continents to arrange 

 without delay a concert of action whose message flashes 



