MODERN PROGRESS

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 239, 6 July 1931, Page 16

MODERN PROGRESS

Factors for Rapid Advance Now that New Zealand is tackling the “depression” in practical fashion and looking ahead to the new business that must develop slowly but surely, it is very interesting to read an extract from the remarks made by Miss Jeanette Carroll, a prominent American business woman, at a recent gathering of business people in the United States. “Our rapid progress as we know it to-day,” Miss Carroll said,. “appears to be largely dependent on three important factors: transportation facilities, means of communication, and ad-' vertising. The progress of material civilisation was incredibly slow when advertising was lacking to educate and to stir the masses. to desire, demand and labour for better things. One of the most curious examples of this truth is to be found in the history of plumbing. ' The ancient Romans had a' pretty good system of plumbing, the household water, being brought over immense aqueducts from the hills 50 miles distant. Some of these leaden pipes were made in England, and bore, a British trademark, for Britain was a Roman colony in the days of the Caesars. “Yet early in the 17th century London’s water mains were hollowed logs, tree trunks. “In 1880 the average American home had neither a bathtub nor running water—2ooo years after a very complete and efficient plumbing system was in use in Imperial Rome. z “It took 20 centuries for people to awaken to the comforts and hygienic value of plumbing and bathtubs, and within a comparatively few years good plumbing has become not only a necessity to American life, but extraordinary advances have been made in the way of beauty and ornamentation of bathrooms, with lovely tinted porcelain tiles and fixtures, and gay, cheerful colour in curtains, towels and soaps. Advertising brought about within a decade or two what the whole sweep of 2000 years could not bring about without advertising.”