HYDRO-ELECTRIC DEVELOPMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 March 1928, Page 8

HYDRO-ELECTRIC DEVELOPMENT.

The effects of hydro-electric developments are bound to be farreaching. New Zealanders are a home-producing and home-loving people since the heart of a home is the wife and mother; the most compelling environment is contained in the home. But New Zealanders’ homes are peculiar in one particular. Generally we have a beautiful climate, and our houses are set ’midst scenes which are invitations to an out-of-doors existence, 'but we are unable as yet to permit our wives and mothers to be other than house slaves. Modern New Zealand young women, possibly because the late war put so many outworn traditions upon the scrap-head, or as the phsychological result of universal suffrage, has made up her mind to end such conditions if at all possible. She is learning that hydro-electricity brought into the home makes a great difference. It gives her light at command without the daily lamp-trimming, an iron that permits ironing to be done in comfort on the hottest days, a range and cooking implements which are and may remain clean and yet efficient, comfort and radiant heat when and where required without the laying-in .and stoking of fires and the cleaning of grates, a kettle actually on the afternoon tea-table, a toaster on the breakfast table, a flooreweep, a washing machine, and still other aids might be had that will be found to lighten her household labour. This is one instance of the forces of physical environment, and leads to the ultimata emancipation of women. So far as domestic assistance goes there remain still many hazards we must clear before th© practical employment of electricity is thoroughly realised. The manager of a factory rightly, considers his own work of organisation as one of the most important functions in the concern, but a manager who rates his own effort® as more valuable than any manual labour is most inconsistent if he does not employ every means, and ever seeks out newer and better means, to lighten the use of merely muscular effort. The unskilled labourer is the most expensive unit in a factory. He may not be eliminated entirely, but a factory cannot be run efficiently if manhandling and muscular effort as a part of the work is not reduced to its economic minimum. There is no form of power which la mor© readily or more universally appllable io industrial operations that electricity! and it is the factory manager’s economic duty to install electricity whenever possible. His competitors will drive him to it. The use ' of electricity in industry cannot take man all the way along the rood to happiness, but. it can 1 help very matcri-

ally. Hydro-electric, power in any readily accessible form, cannot fail to have a very great influence upon life in any country, and most notably must this influence be felt in a new and young country like New Zealand. It is power; even as the burning coal, the flowing stream, the steady wind or the muscles of the horse and ox are power. In the past the horse was man’s great friend, but in the future his 'greatest help, his most willing servant, will be the more inanimate, mor© powerful and mor© tireless slave represented by hydro-electric power. Little by little the home- will be the brighter and cleaner because of the use of electric power.