The Ketchikan miner., 1908-09-19
HE END OF BOUNDARY LINES


 Il earth so large that it would appear to an astronomer on another sphere, is fast becoming mere mass of crumbling clay, on the frontier of the Yellow empire. It can equally be said that all bal alriers which have separated peoples ot the earth, all walls of ex- clusion are fast passing away. Once the lowest wall separated men from their fellows and the little peninsula of Greece was divided into countless city republics. Every man who dared venture into his neighbours town was greeted as foreigner and intruder. That age is passing away. The cry along the Yukon of the Arctic Broth erhood, "There is no boundary here, ;" is becoming the ..cry..of the world.
 Nothing is hastening the day of brotherhood more than the marvellous inventions ot modern times. Every great scientific achievement of recent years seeks to annihila space, break down barriers and bring the distant pl aces face to face with each other.
 The dreams of Robert Watts and John Stephenson and the victory of Fulton's clumsy Clermont turned the age of stage coach and sails into the age of rails and steamers and brought Lon don and New York closer than Boston and Philadelphia had been. The "Cheese Box'' of Ericson steam ing up Hampton Roads put the 'Con- sttution" out of date and gave birth tot the American fleet of 1908 which links Australia and America closer than Maine and Georgia of forty years ago.
 Then Morse set the wires clicking and Field tied the continents together with mighty cable, and then was born the modern newspaper, the mar vicious telegraph systems, and the world began to think as one.
 But the telegraph had it's draw backs, it's limitations. And then came two wonderful inventions and space seem- ed doomed and barriers conquered. the telephone and the wireless. The telephone alone has revolutionized the business orld, added greatly to the facilii s of communication and saved years to busy men and women. It has leaped over state lines, it has tied home and buusiness, husband and wife closer together. it knows no east, no west, no north nor south. Every night the news of Paris is not only telephon- ed over to London but by the Photo telegraph, the portraits of great men and leading personages are waited over the channel into the London pa pers.
 No praise is too great for the wire less telegraph. A great Englishman has said that it has driven the dark from off the sea, that today for 1.60o miles from British ports, England can keep her eye on every ship that ap- breaches her shores. Soon the entire British Columbia and Alaskan coast will be in touch, without a cable to rust or a wire to be broken in storm. and with only air itself to voice the messages of Nome to Ketchikan. The great military and commei cial value of the wireless telegraph can not be estimated.
 Then came the auto cars, once a thing of sport, now necessity, is the royal chariot of the city, the prairie schooner of the desert, and, that has even encircled the globe.
 Now at last comes the crowning tri- umph which puts the Chicago Ii mited to shame and laughs the sails and puffing ships at sea to scorn. The airship is here. Whether power machine upheld by an immense bal loon like that of Germany. the heli- copter designed and advocated by Edi- son or the winged aeroplane of Will bur Wright, which has captivated France and conquered the American war department, it IS surely here. Eight gears ago it seemed doomed.
 To find the key to it's invention, men have sunk fortunes and lost their lives, but at lcst the eagle has rival and man --rdes on the wings of the wind. Wilbur Wright said he begar his experiments as a sport and that his aeroplane was built for a play thing. Undoupbtedly the aeroplane will be a plaything of wealth for a ime, as the automobile has been, but not for long. It will soon become d government and commercial neces- sity. Already the war department is planning to build fleet of airships that will rival the ships of Admiral Sperry in the eyes of the world.
 The immense importance of this final triumph of man is beyond the scope the imagination. Mountains. Chinese Walls, human barriers go for naught. Ice of Behring sea, Alas kan peaks and forests. Thbet's grim sentinels exclnsi on laws, Sahara des- erts, oceans endless waters, Andean summits; it laughs at them all. Il knows no race nor tongue: at it, lions