Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/124

 a starting-point: because coal will, probably before the complete exhaustion of the supply of it, have been found altogether too dirty and unhealthy a thing to use, at all events by way of combustion, though rumours are heard from time to time of new methods by which the stored energy of coal may be utilised directly, to the great economy of the material. In all sorts of ways the early years of the century will be employing themselves in seeking out new sources of man's chief necessity—power: and a hundred years hence we shall have entered upon the full inheritance of them.

But the obtaining of power is only one problem of the mechanician. Of almost equal, if not quite equal, importance is that of applying power at the place where it is needed, and the careful reader will not have overlooked the fact that while we have been discussing the use of electricity as a source of power we have already been anticipating, and perhaps anticipating a good deal. For, when we now speak of machinery and locomotive engines being "driven" by electricity, we are really only employing a sort of convenient periphrasis. All our electric machinery, all our electric railways, our "tuppeny" tubes and the horrible electric trams which make life almost intolerable in houses along many of the main roads out of London, are really driven by coal-burning steam