Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1910-01-07
Edison's Conception Of
Conditions Of Future.
Laboring Man viii Live as
Well as Rich Man Today.
Everyone Will Work With Brains
For the Common Good.

New York, Jan. 6.-Thomas A. Edison,
looking into the future, thinks the pros
pect of the laboring man is a particular
ly bright one.
In 200 years by the cheapening of
commodities, the ordinary laborer will
live as we'll as a man does now with $780,
900 annual income. Automatic machinery
and scientific agriculture will bring about
this result" Mr.. Edison says, in the cur
rent issue of the Independent. Not in
dividualsm but social labor will domi-
nate the future; you can't have Individual
machines and every man working by him
self. Industry will constantly become
more social and interdependent There
will be no manual labor in the factories
Of the future. The men in them will be
merely superintendent, watching the ma
chinery to see that it works right.
THE work days. l believe, will be eight
hours. Every man needs that much work
to keep him out of mischief and to keep
him happy. But it will be work with the
brain, something that men will be inter-
ested in, and done in wholesome, pleas
ant surroundings Less and less man will
be used as an engine, or a horse, and
his brain will be employed to benefit him
self and his fellows
THE clothes Of the future will be so
cheap that every young woman will be
able to follow the fashions promptly. and
there will be plenty of fashions.
Communication with other worlds has
been suggested. l think we had better
stick to this world and find out some
thing about it before we call up our
| neighbors They might make us ashamed
Of ourselves.
THE monorail does not appeal to me-
1t was a fundamental mistake that our
| railroads were built on a 4-foot-9-inch
guage instead of a 6-foot guage, which
We will probably have to come to yet.
The aeroplane of the future will, 1
think. have to be on the helicopter prin-
ciple. successful air machine must be
able to defy the winds. If " rights aero
plane had one-twentieth of it's surface,
he wind would not affect it. The helcop
ter principle is the only way to rise above
| atmospheric conditions. By increasing the
velocity of propeller revolutions the size
of the machine can be diminished and
thereby we vanqush the hostility of the
WILL "A HtllcOpteT cOulu nave IOOC-SlZe
planes distributed on 100 to 15O-foot
circle and controlled from the center by
wires.
Chemical food has been worked out
pretty well by Emil Fischer and his stu
dents, but it won't be a commercial prop
ostion You can't beat the farm as lab
oratory, commercially speaking. If we
should dry up like Mars and couldn't
raise vegetables on the earth, we might
turn to a chemical diet.
Society will have to stop this whskey
business which is like throwing sand in
the bearings of steam engine
Among the many problems which
await solution in the future one of the
most important is to get the full value
out of fuel The wastefulness of our
present methods of combustion is ire
mendous.
''T-erc is not as much power in a ton
of 10 per cent. dynamite as there is in
a ton of coal.
Everything in nature would burn I'D
if it We're not for the fact that nearly
everything except coal is already burned
up. Iron would burn and make good
fuel-if in very fine powder-but it has
already been consumed in Natures fur
mace.
I'VE may discover the germ of getting
all the power from fuel tomorrow, and
then again it may take long time to
find out
To get rid of friction in our machines
is one of the future problems The only
machine without friction that we know
Is the world, and it moves in the resist
less ether"