IN A HUNDRED YEARS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11593, 11 January 1916, Page 7

IN A HUNDRED YEARS.

ANOTHER PROPHET. Many persons have dipped into the future and have tried to realise what the world will be like a hundred years hence. The latest is a- contributor to '•Harper's Magazine"—Mr Alan Sullivan—who dreams of the city that is to be: 3 A glance reveals its streets, broad and spotless, to which the horse is a stranger, and whose smooth surface is unsearred by the universal pneumatic tyre. Synthetic rubber has arrived. The city traffic is eaSirely electrical. Trucks and motors speed swiftly without odour or noise; they are chai'ged with power at the great central station in off-peak hours. The air is notably pure and stainless. Coal is not used as fuel; there are no ashes to haul away, and only a faint film arises from the fireplace of old-fashioned folk who stick to wood. " It is now many years since a new heating element was discovered, many times more efficient than its predecessor." IN DOMESTIC LIFE. But the greatest changes depicted by the'seer have reference to domestic life. Menial, manual work has disappeared, and there is no longer any difficulty in securing trained and skilful service: Food is kept in motor-cooled refrigerators, or brine is pumped through your larder from a central plant. Cooking is done on electric stoves. The meals of some fastidious families are sent scorching hot from a distributing restaurant. The slavery of dish-washing has vanished. This drudgery is performed by automatic cleansers and driers without wetting the hands. Vacuum cleaners remove the dust, ozomV.ors revivify the air. windows are mechanically scrubbed and polished. In short, the enfranchised domestic uses her fingers and brain instead of her arms and back. CHILDREN'S LAUCIHTER RARE. On the shining street men may be observed telephoning by wireless through minute portable instruments. Then "electric trains have annihilated distance. BaJnntvrl by gyroscopes, they speed at two hundred miles an hour on a single rail, wliil ■ • overhead the shy is dotted with air-diips." Further we read : And the people themselves are not materially changed save that there is a droon in the shoulder and they are Ics athletic. Legs and arms are feebler.

since there is now practically no manual work. Heads are larger, and there is a new and striking; pallor. Life is more colourless, scientific and mental. The laughter of children is more rare. Emotion is popularly regarded as crude and prehistoric, and the thyroid gland is the Airbiter of existence. . . . Tha mechanic glides to hi* automatic machinery in a. small motor. He line much that the rich man lias. To such an extent is life mechanical and without individual effort that the race is silent, critical, calculating and without passion. The elements are trained and put to work, but in man there is left little that is elemental. Earth pays tribute. and man bns climbed to tW top of the ladder. " But the greatest gulf of all remains unfathemed. and the stars ar« as far away as ever."