WANGANUI-RANGITIKEI ELECTRIC POWER BOARD

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 283, 24 August 1940, Page 16

WANGANUI-RANGITIKEI ELECTRIC POWER BOARD

If one were asked to name one single thing that had, more than any other, revolutionized the working, recreational —yes, even sleeping—hours of mankind, the obvious answer to many would be the tiny switch that “turned on” the electricity. It was only yesterday, as time goes, that man and woman was dependent on the kerosene lamp; the colonial cooking oven; the flat iron, and so on.

Consider the routine, in the average household today. One rises in the morning, turns a switch, and in a few minutes there is boiling water for the morning tea; turn another switch, and a handsome radiator straightway begins to heat the breakfast-room (with no mess to clean up afterward) ; for the family baths there is ample hot water (the electric water-heating apparatus has been working while the family slept) ; another switch and the porridge, bacon and toast are op the way, while for the daily chores that follow the departure of the family to work and to school electricity has proved the greatest friend the housewife has known, for it takes all the labour of cleaning, washing, ironing ami other necessary tasks hitherto coming under the classification of “drudgery.”

This is by no means the end of the tale of electricity’s service to humanity’s domestic and social life, for it makes possible the thousands of other things that go to make up the full day of the modern man, woman and child. The vast changes electricity has brought about on the industrial side of man’s activities are even more remarkable than those brought about in his home, and electricity has made, possible the manufacture of the multitude? of articles today considered necessary, but to our immediate forbears, many of them unknown.

It is one thing to produce eleclricty but what of its distribution to the thousands of homes, factories, and

farm buildings spread over tlie countryside? This has been carried out in New Zealand by the electric power boards, whose work in the main has been outstandingly successful, and is now more than ever of distinct national importance. One of the very successful boards is that which serves the Wanganui-Rangitikei district, and which has its headquarters at Wanganui. Its district, extends from the Rangitikei river in the south to the outskirts of Patea in the north, and inland just south of Waiouru. Included in its area is some for the most difficult country in New Zealand, some of it sparsely' settled. The maintenance of a regular supply or electricity in such a district, therefore, implies organization of the maximum efficiency, which in turn assures 2-l-hours-a-day service seven days a week. This is what the Wanganui Rangitikei Electric Power Board’s consumers have come to expect, and they get it.