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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Geographic science is fast revealing 

 the world and its possibilities and poten- 

 tialities ; intercommunication is fast util- 

 izing these discoveries and making nec- 

 essary to all people common language or 

 common understanding of languages, 

 and when that common understanding 

 comes, which is bound to come with free 

 exchange of thought and ideas, then will 

 come a common brotherhood. 



GEOGRAPHY DISSIPATES SUPERSTITION 



It will take time to overcome the force 

 of inertia which binds the man to the 

 inherent, inherited, inbred ideas, tradi- 

 tions, prejudices, habits, conventionalities, 

 which endure through generations and 

 are overcome only by new experiences, 

 new knowledge. Some term this con- 

 servatism, but it is nothing but the iner- 

 tia that comes from lack of a new knowl- 

 edge vivified by new experiences. 



Geography reveals the world and 

 makes it real ; it dissipates the haze and 

 fog of superstition and tradition, attracts 

 and encourages the travel which brings 

 expansion. In this vast field there is 

 abundant room for practical, construc- 

 tive imagination to work. The immedi- 

 ate future is only dimly outlined by the 

 light of past experience and present 

 knowledge ; the distant future is still in 

 the shadowy haze of uncertainty, specu- 

 lation and doubt ; but, though it may be 

 too optimistic and too hopeful, there 

 seems to me no doubt but that progress 

 in the future will be as marked as in the 

 past. 



There can be but few great develop- 

 ments in the future of which the begin- 

 nings have not been made or have not 

 been foreshadowed. Each age has be- 

 lieved it had reached the acme of evolu- 

 tion in economical, commercial, and 

 artistic lines, and that but little more was 

 possible. In '"transportation" the newly 

 introduced stagecoach of the eighteenth 

 century gave way to the steam railroad 

 expresses of the nineteenth century ; and 

 electrical and aerial transportation are 

 dawning in the twentieth. In "intercom- 

 munication" the signal lights of the Mid- 

 dle Ages gave way to the semaphore of 

 the eighteenth centurv — the electric tele- 



graph of the early, supplemented by the 

 telephone in the late, nineteenth century. 

 And in the twentieth comes the dawn of 

 transcontinental, transoceanic, and cir- 

 cum-mundane electrical intercommunica- 

 tion and conversation ! 



When Mr. Bell and Mr. Watson first 

 talked in public over the telephone, or 

 Mr. Hubbard first tried to interest con- 

 structive interests' in the new "Yankee 

 toy," if either had prophesied as possible 

 what actually exists today, he would 

 have been laughed at. Those who laid 

 the foundation of the business could well 

 define the structure, but its magnitude 

 has far surpassed expectation. When 

 my connection with the telephone was 

 announced, one who was then a Repre- 

 sentative and afterward a Senator and a 

 Cabinet Minister, whose name always 

 commands respect, said to me : "Vail, that 

 isn't a big enough business for you." 

 Consider that in the light of today ! 



SOME DAY WE WILL BE ABLE TO 



TELEPHONE TO EVERY PART 



OF THE WORLD 



Is it too much to think that in time it 

 will be possible for any one, at any place, 

 to immediately communicate with any 

 one at any other place in the Avorld by 

 reasonably available methods ; that dis- 

 tance will be annihilated and the whole 

 world will be united in common inter- 

 ests, common thought, common tradi- 

 tions, and prejudices? Then and only 

 then can there be a common people. 



The wonderful work that geograph- 

 ical research did in opening up the un- 

 known world in the late seventeenth, 

 eighteenth, and early nineteenth centu- 

 ries presented a new field to the people 

 of initiative and enterprise, of an Old 

 World already bursting its confines by 

 its overdevelopment. 



This world development, for which 

 geographic research is largely responsi- 

 ble, is in turn responsible for the magni- 

 tude of present operations, economic and 

 social. This immensity is constructive, 

 not destructive ; is something to be wel- 

 comed and encouraged rather than per- 

 secuted and destroyed. It is something 



