CHEAPEST THING IN THE WORLD.

Northern Advocate, 18 December 1911, Page 3

CHEAPEST THING IN THE WORLD.

THE MARVELS OF PROGRESS

Mr Andrew Carnegie, receiving the freedom of" St. Albans, contrasted the present day condition of things with those existing at the time of the foundation of the abbey in the eighth century.

The purchasing power of money at that period, he said, was surprising. Sheep were valued at a shilling apiece, and pigs at two shillings as late as the eleventh century. Half s sovereign was the price of a horse and £1 the normal price of a slave. It was the age of cheap prices, but the present age had its cheap prices also.

What, for instance, did they say to having a newspaper, delivered at their residence every morning, containing news from all parts of the worldflashed under the sea and over the mountains —the news of the world presented to them at their breakfast table—all for a penny The good old times of the past had nothing to boast of as cheap as that —probably the cheapest of all things, considering what was provided. -

Think, too, of letters being carried 14,000 miles to Australia of 3000 miles to America for a penny. Again, we were swept along at fifty miles an hour for a halfpenny a mile upon excursion trains. Think of the masterpiece of literature being procurable for sixpence a volume! Six pounds could scarcely have procured one. of these volumes in the olden times. It was not good form for a gentleman to know how to read and write in those days. Now we had public libraries which placed an ample reach of every man, woman and child.

' He maintained that the progress of man was upward, and that the ascent would;' continue towards perfection. We were on the eve of the age when men would beat their swords with ploughshares and their spears with pruning hooks, and in this noble change the English-speaking people were to be leaders.