The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-12-29
WHAT MODERN MAN OWES ID FRANKLIN How We Almost Live By
 Electricity THE ENORMOUS INDUSTRIES The Mysterious Fluid Does Everything for Us From Milking the Cows
 to Melting the Hard
 est Metals.

New York, December 2S.-(Special.) This is tbe motor age. but even the casual observer has no difficulty In still discovering horses on New York's streets-indeed, in finding them in such numbers as often to make the crossing of thoroughfare something of a prob lem The average person, of course, might wonder why horses should not be seen there until his memory is logged into recalling a statement of Thomas A. Edison's made last year, to the effect that by Christmas of 1908 the horse for commercial uses would have disappeared from metropolitan streets to make room for electric horse less carts, wagons, drays and all the other vehicles which handle the city's trade
 Yet if the metropolis has not arrived at an exclusively horseless age-or rather at that of electric transporta- tion-each New Years day finds 1t a long way further on It's progress to- ward the electrical era. The things that cannot be done by electricity now are hardly worth doing.
 Indeed, in all parts of the country the use of electricity and electrical ap- paratus Is undoubtedly increasing by leaps and bounds. Whether 1t be milking a COW or creating a tempera- ture of such intense heat as has never before been obtained--a mere trifie, perhaps, of 7200 degrees--the volatile agent lurod from the clouds by pr. Franklin is almost invariably called upon. In It's commercial aspect, too, electricity permeates all business life. It Is not surprising that the United States not only leads all countries of the world in manufacturing electrical apparatus, but also sends men abroad to do the construction work. In many of the most highly productive manu- featuring districts of the United States electric power is being installed about ten times moro generally than any other kind. The total of sales for 1901 is not yet available, but those of 1908 of the three greatest producers of this field in the United States. and, there fore, of course, in the world. the West ern Electric company the General Elec tric and the Westinghouse Electric, reach ed the enormous sum of more than $160, 100000.
 The product represented by this big total enters into the daily lives of all classes of Americans Take, for ex- ample, the output of the Western Elec- trio company, the largest of the big three whose sales alone last year ap rroximated $7O.O0O,OO0. The great oulk of these consisted not in power plants or huge engines. but in that universal agent of everyday life-the ubiquitous teleph one. Mere than $S5, 900 worth of teleN ones and telephone supptes ere produced in the United States last year and of this sum the Western Electric, manufacturer under the Bell patents, turned out by far the greater part With the country sending over the wires something like 15,000,00o.e0O telephone talks every year. these i3- ures give some indication of the extent to which, through the telephone, the whole country Is being electrified.
 At about the middle eighties, when the Wastern Electric first began to turn out telephones, the total output for the year was 60,000 instruments. Now 1t It's gigantic factory in New York that total represents only two weeks output, for the instruments are manu- factured at the astounding rate of 5000 daily. or say 1500,000 q year. Moie than 2S,00O employees of this company were busted last year In turning out the little talk machines and their ac- ce ssories, the switchboards and o3er apparatus being manufactured at the Chicago headquarters. The results Of this labor, if combined ,nto single instrument would create mnnster tel ephone nearly 300 miles >kigh and weigh Ing almost 400o tons-a colossal monument to the use of electricity in everyday life.
 Other uses of electricity are almost too familiar to mention. The whole matter Is still a scientific marvel. The business man in his office looks at an