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COMMUNICATING AND TRAVELLING

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LAYING THE ATLANTIC CABLE-A LINK TO BIND NATIONS TOGETHER."

THE VOICES IN SPACE

Over the wires of the telephone, day and night, go the voices of men and women speaking their lines in the drama of life. An ever-changing theme it is. The stage reaches from ocean to ocean. The players are constantly changing; the scenes are different, but the action never stops.

Now a flash of comedy — quietly, and mile-a-second laughter leaps over unreckoned space. Now a curt command, and across a continent the wheels of commerce move. Again the scene shifts Again the scene shifts - grim tragedy stalks the boards—a cry for law and justice vibrates into the night.

So runs the endless drama of the wires.

In 1789, George Washington rode on horseback from Mt. Vernon to his inauguration as President in New York, then the national capital. His journey required several days. Thirty years later, when Andrew Jackson was elected as President, fourteen days passed before word of that honor reached him at his home in Tennessee. The news of Abraham Lincoln's nomination for the presidency did not reach San Francisco until eight days after the convention in Chicago. In 1830, a stage-coach journey from Washington to Indianapolis required twenty days, while a trip from New York to San Francisco by public conveyance was an impossibility. Even as late as 1840 the cost of sending one ounce of mail by coach and pony express across the continent was ten dollars, and the time required was thirty days.

To-day, a New York merchant may easily converse over the telephone with a San Francisco customer; a message can be sent around the world by wire in oneseventh of one second. A railway journey from Washington to Indianapolis requires only fourteen hours, and a trip across the continent may be made in four days. In great emergencies, thousand-mile journeys may be made by air transport in ten hours. In 1923, President Calvin Coolidge addressed thirty millions of his countrymen over the radio; his voice was carried instantly to New Orleans and to San Francisco. Ships at sea are in constant and almost instant communication with land a thousand miles away. From the remotest parts of the civilized world, news of yesterday is published in our morning newspapers. Ten million pieces of mail, each carried at a very small cost, pass through the postal service of New York City every twenty-four hours; the total daily movement of mail in the United States approaches 1,000,000,000 pieces.

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3. The First Railroad Across the Continent. . 4. The Home Express...

I. The Sea..

Anonymous 293

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D. CROSSING GREAT WATERS

2. Laying the Atlantic Cable..

3. Sea-Fever......

4. How Phileas Fogg Won His Wager. 5. The Glory of Ships....

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