Show ELECTRIC ENERGY DOOMS BIG CITIES redistribution of industry seen by harper leech new kew york fork glant giant cities will grow no larger and will lose their present financial and industrial importance industry will break up into smaller u unita its and operate in what aro are now rural districts the worker will receive a greater share of his employers profits in order to maintain buying power and the cost of killing a chinaman will jump from about fifty dollars dull urs the present level to approximately all in the c comparatively near future and because kind has discarded human and energy based on food cultivation and substituted tor for it ills his newly discovered ability to convert solar energy into work principally in the form of electric power these are some of the predictions affecting the welfare 0 of f flu inanity humanity made by harper leech writer on economic subjects in his fits new book the paradox of plenty that this Is not net a depression but a of the greatest era of plenty the world hiis has ever known Is the thesis of mr leechs book the plain fact Is lie says in his preface I 1 that after thousands perhaps millions of years of living on tile the energy grudgingly tendered by the sun through annual harvests of crops man suddenly became aware that the same sun had been storing energy tor for millions of years ile he discovered in ln coal nn an energy store with millions of times the energy available from ills own muscles nearly two hundred years laterre later late rhe he still thinks of scarcity when there Is no scarcity and falling failing to adjust his institutions and ills his financial mechanisms to the conditions of plenty he has failed to realize the advantages of plenty transformation of the united states the transformation of the united S tates states into a new form forin of industrial society through the interconnection of electric power and transmission of energy has already started according to mr leech and Is now proceeding as rapidly as the previous political and economic of america by railroad construction mr leech points to recent developments in the carolinas Caroll nas as typical of mint may be expected of the future industrialism of the united states in the walle wake of its constantly expanding use of electrical energy iri in the piedmont region of the alie carolinas Caroll nas he writes the first quarter of tile the twentieth century witnessed a repetition of the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century in the north norih ot of england there was the same shift from li agal gri culture lind and cottage industries t to factories but no growth of cities to correspond to the growth of the steam generated geue rated Baby lons like Blan manchester chester leeds pittsburgh or chicago which gathered into themselves the great constructive forces of the nineteenth ceri century tury the new type of industrialism which Is seen in most characteristic form in the carolinas Caroll nas lias has been subjected to much criticism but it brought to the inhabitants of those regions a far greater net gain of income and welfare than came to the people who lived through the great transitions from agriculture to factory life in regions of earlier industrial maturity whether urban critics like it or not the carolinas Caroll nas today are a prototype of the future industrialism of america Amert ca the mammoth metropolises ses of the mod modern e rn world already show signs of overgrowth and overspecialization which in the organic world foretell the doom of a species because of the congestion in cities there has been built up a complex system of distribution there tire are brokers jobbers wholesalers and warehouse men all adding tremendously to the expense of transportation and handling superficially the gre greater per capita consumption of electricity in c cities would indicate higher living standards than in small communities with a lower per capita consumption but much of the urban use of electricity goes merely to level up the city dwellers plane of life to that already enjoyed by the inhabitant of the smaller community without recourse to electrical or mechanical power value changes I 1 mr leech points out in his book that the vastly increased ability to produce agricultural and other products that electrical energy has placed in the hands bands of men has destroyed completely the promise that scarcity Is a measure of value with the energy now available he be says it takes but a small proportion of the population to supply the essential needs or of the whole nation therefore he adds there can be no scarcity and scarcity ceases to be a measure of value in conclusion mr leech strikes a n note 0 te ct f optimism for the future of the united states and its citizens and for western civilization as a whole slowly he be declares the force of economic and technical realities has been removing I 1 ng from the throat of western mankind the dead hand of obsolete economic doctrine the evidence Is unmistakable that humanity can escape from the prison house of want and although still rubbing eyes blinded from long confinement in the dungeon can now see a new world with famine vanquished and other forms of privation being rapidly diminished old faiths born of wont want and fear have been losing force jil i i |