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works equal good. Its motor freeing us from dependence on the horse is
spreading our towns and cities into their adjoining country. Field and
garden compete with airless streets. The sunny cottage is in active
rivalry with the odious tenement-house. It is found that transportation
within the gates of a metropolis has an importance second only to the
means of transit which links one city with another. The engineer is at
last filling the gap which too long existed between the traction of
horses and that of steam. In point of speed, cleanliness, and comfort
such an electric subway as that of South London leaves nothing to be
desired. Throughout America electric roads, at first suburban, are now
fast joining town to town and city to city, while, as auxiliaries to
steam railroads, they place sparsely settled communities in the arterial
current of the world, and build up a ready market for the dairyman and
the fruit-grower. In its saving of what Mr. Oscar T. Crosby has called
"man-hours" the third-rail system is beginning to oust steam as a motive
power from trunk-lines. Already shrewd railroad managers are granting
partnerships to the electricians who might otherwise encroach upon their
dividends. A service at first restricted to passengers has now extended
itself to the carriage of letters and parcels, and begins to reach out
for common freight. We may soon see the farmer's cry for good roads
satisfied by good electric lines that will take his crops to market much
more cheaply and quickly than horses and macadam ever did. In cities,
electromobile cabs and vans steadily increase in numbers, furthering the
quiet and cleanliness introduced by the trolley car.

A word has been said about the blessings which electricity promises to
country folk, yet greater are the boons it stands ready to bestow in the
hives of population. Until a few decades ago the water-supply of cities
was a matter not of municipal but of individual enterprise; water was
drawn in large part from wells here and there, from lines of piping laid
in favoured localities, and always insufficient. Many an epidemic of
typhoid fever was due to the contamination of a spring by a cesspool a
few yards away. To-day a supply such as that of New York is abundant
and cheap because it enters every house. Let a centralized electrical
service enjoy a like privilege, and it will offer a current which is
heat, light, chemical energy, or motive power, and all at a wage lower
t