Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1894 — TOPICS OF THIESE TLMES. [ARTICLE]

T OPICS OF THIESE TLMES.

AN ELECTRIC AGE. Twenty-five years ago scientists boasted of the wonderful progress of the ‘‘lron Age” with all its attendant triumphs on land and sea. A few brief years and the wonders of that day were supplanted by the greater triumphs of an “Age of Steel.” Iron was relegated to the junk heaps of a forgdtten past and hardened steel came in to fill its place in all the arts and structures jf the time. While it is true that steel still holds its place as a component part of almost every triumph jf the day, yet its importance has, by familiarity, waned in the public esteem and it no longer holds or zlaims to hold thb fifst place as a factor in the industrial developmen t M the age. Every detail of our progress now seems to hinge upon the further development of applied electricity, and the possibilities in this direction warrant us in calling jur day and time “The Electric Age." Electric street cars have already become familiar in almost every large city in the world, and every month brings intelligence of some new achievement of electrical engineers. Great suburban electric rail way sch em es are daily projected md assurance given that they will speedily materialize and change the course of urban development, weaning and luring the tired denizens of the metropolis to scenes of beauty and dreams of peace and quiet. No more, when these schemes eventuate, need the troubled business man dwell amid the arid wastes of giant towers where he daily toils; but when the day is done can speed away to villages far from the hateful crowd. The great north shore project at Chicago will transform all that territory between Chicago and Milwaukee along the lake shore into a prolonged stretch of happy homes, and the gigantic electric system, now well under way, with a capital of $10,000,000, between Philadelphia and New York, will bring into the closest communication all the intervening territory tributary to those gigantic municipalities on the eastern seabord. Trains on all these roads will run at a rate of not less than sixty miles an hour, and with the capital at command it would seem that there can be no doubt of the speedy realization of the wildest dreams of enthusiasts on the subject of an “Electric 4ge.” ==—=—=-