The Age of Electricity.
Ærial navigation shunned by many people in 1999. The great Age
of Electricity. The Passing of the Horse. The noble beast loses
its fetters and becomes a Household Pet. Steam engines a relic
of the past. No more smoke in railroad travel. Tunnels lighted
bright as day and filled with pure air. Single-rail electric
roads all the go.
It must not, however, be imagined that people in 1999 passed away their
whole lives traveling in the air. Millions could not be induced under
any consideration, to plant a foot in any ærial ship. They hugged old
Mother Earth with a true devotion worthy of a better cause. Many people
in the year 1899 were to be found who entertained strong antipathies
against traveling on water, but in 1999 the opponents [Old Earth Good
Enough for Them.] of ærial navigation outnumbered them one hundred
to one. For this and other more important reasons, the genius of the
twentieth century applied itself assiduously to the perfecting of
electrical and compressed air machines of every conceivable character.
The twentieth century saw the coup-de-grâce, or death blow, given
to sails for propelling ships, horses used for traction purposes
and steam in mechanical engineering. Electricity, drawn directly
from coal, as well as the air, was procurable in inexhaustible
quantities. Electricity long before 1999 was stored with the utmost
ease and economy, and shipped all over the world for lighting,
heating and motive power. The partnership existing between the
old-fashion steam engine and electric dynamos was dissolved forever
in 1920. Electricity conducted the business alone and in its own name
after steam and its clumsy accessories withdrew from the firm.
One of the first to feel the effects of the [Good-bye Mr. Horse.]
change was that greatly admired and beloved creature, the horse. In
1999 plenty of horses were yet to be found in the haunts of
civilization. They were generally kept as pets, gentle, graceful
and docile creatures, reminders of past centuries in which their
progenitors had so laboriously served the ends of man. Occasionally
in 1999 some old-fashioned swell, who had been acquainted with horses
and their ways in 1930, would occasionally harness up a pair to a
curious looking vehicle with shafts and take a short drive, but in
1999 such antiquities were regarded with the same curiosity Noah might
have experienced could he have seen an ærodrome circling around the
ark. Out in the country, in remote districts and mountain regions,
horses were occasionally seen doing farm work, but the sight was an
unusual one, invariably attracting much attention. It was estimated
in 1999 that in about one hundred more years the horse in cities and
country towns would become as rare as the buffalo.
In 1930 when the horse had already ceased to be a beast of burden,
epicures openly accepted its flesh as a highly esteemed dish. Indeed
it became quite the fad for fast swells to dine on trotter steak. The
dray and carriage horses were the first ones to disappear, but the
racers held on pretty well. In 1942 the turf and paddock were still
popular, though rapidly declining.
The competitors that drove the horse from its field of labor were the
electric and compressed air horseless vehicles. As early as 1899 the
horseless carriage was rapidly striding into popularity. In 1920 they
were common sights everywhere. In 1950 they had crowded the horse to
the wall and in 1999 horseless vehicles for business or pleasure were
exclusively employed everywhere.
Horses in 1999 were no longer beasts of burden in the great American
Republic. [Emancipated by Electricity.] They had been emancipated by
electricity and compressed air. In remote sections of the American
Republic, like the pampas of the State of Brazil and the mountain
regions of the State of Peru, horses were frequently to be seen,
but seldom employed as beasts of burden. It took many centuries to
wipe the equine race from the face of the globe. The history and
achievements of the noble brute had been for many centuries linked
to that of man. In 1999 the Arab still loved his faithful charger,
guarding it as the apple of his eye. The noble animal still shared his
tent. In his estimation a wife or two were of little worth compared
with the swift, graceful animal that so often carried him from danger
and left his pursuers in the rear. It would have been sad indeed for
the world, so early as 1999 to lose an animal endowed by nature with
so much intelligence, an animal that again and again had decided
a thousand fields of battle and had braved all dangers by land or
sea. But from the thraldom of labor, the horse in 1999 had been
emancipated and this tribute was one worthy of his peerless fame.
Even the reindeer of the Polar regions felt the touch of twentieth
century genius. The Laplander had no further use for the dog-power of
his ancestors. His sleds glided along the fields of ice, propelled
by electricity, of which inexhaustible supplies were drawn from the
aurora borealis.
In 1999 automobiles required only three days to traverse the distance
from Montreal in the American State of East Canada to Washington,
our national capital in the State of Mexico. The roads throughout the
Americas had reached a high grade of perfection and travel on electric
automobiles [Good Roads Everywhere.] became a pleasure even in all
the Southern States of the American Union, such as Venezuela, Bolivia,
Colombia, Ecuador, and Argentina. Uncle Sam's farm in 1999 was a big
one and was covered with good roads. Horses and steam engines were
altogether too slow for the twentieth century.
The exclusion of steam from all railroads in 1999 proved a great
boon to travel. Railroad smoke was a drawback to steam roads, while
sparks, cinders and live coal were a constant danger to property. When
a happy bride and groom took their departure on a train for their
honeymoon in 1899 their friends pelted them with rice, while the old
fashion steam engine attached to the train rounded the compliment by
pelting the newly wedded pair with cinders and soot. Dense volumes
of black smoke [Delights of Steam Travel.] poured into the railway
coaches, filling every crevice and corner, rendering the human face
unrecognizable. Travelers in these old-fashioned cars, clad in the
bravery of fashion, in their silks and fine raiment, would journey only
a short distance when they would become almost unrecognizable from
the torrents of black soft-coal smoke that pierced their cuticle and
darkened their lives. It was hard to determine at the end of a brief
journey of a thousand miles whether the white man who bought a through
ticket in New York was a Caucasian or an Ethiopian when he landed in
Chicago, so dense was the smoke through which he had traveled.
The delightful atmosphere of a tunnel formed one of the great
attractions of steam travel in the good old days of 1899. Our unhappy
American travelers while journeying on these steam roads would
suddenly be rushed into a black hole, the damp and foul air of which
was enough to kill a salamander, filled with smoke and asphyxiating
gases. The marvel is that one-half of the people ever pulled through
a tunnel alive.
In 1999 these monstrosities of steam railroad [The Single Rail is
King.] travel were entirely done away with. Not a steam engine was
anywhere to be found. The single rail electric railroad was monarch
of all it surveyed, and there were none to dispute its sway. It ruled
the universe. The new-born electrical power drew its forces from the
air. Electricity was greater than light itself. Its rule was felt by
day as well as by night.
In 1999 when an electric train dashed through a tunnel, its arch was
aglow with electric fire, rendering the passage light as at noon time
in a blazing sun. A touch of the button turned on every light in the
coaches. The air of the tunnel, instead of being black with smoke
and noxious vapors, was pure as the open air. Travel was rendered
delightful in these swift-speeding trains on the single-rail electric
railroads, which easily maintained a speed of two miles per minute. In
point of speed they were easily outwinged by the ærodromes, but for
all that, grass did not have much time to grow under the gearing of
any electric car in 1999.
These single-track electric railroads covered the Americas like a
network of cob-webs. They were much safer than the two-track system
of railroads peculiar to the old period of 1899, when steam engines,
going around curves at two miles per minute, were liable to lose
their heads and lay down in the ditch to try and figure out where they
were at. The single rail upon which the electric car was balanced in
1999, was built about three feet above the track. The cars were so
constructed that [Two Miles per Minute.] the wheels ran along their
whole length, the sides of the car being built to a point about two
feet below the rail. The trolley wire overhead gave more steadiness
to the car. It could not upset.
Through lines from Chicago to Washington, in the State of Mexico,
attained high speed, as well as the electric lines that crossed
the isthmus from the State of Mexico to Rio Janeiro. It frequently
happened that strawberries gathered at the base of Mt. Orizaba,
in Mexico, were delivered in Chicago in season for supper the same
day. Fish of highly esteemed flavor that were swimming in the bay of
Vera Cruz at break of day were frequently placed on ice and reached
Manhattan in time for dinner at seven p. m. the same day.