Journal of Electricity, Vol. 42

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Excerpt from Journal of Electricity, Vol. 42: January to June, 1919The Greatest Reconstruction Problem of them all is not in the rebuilding of devastated cities, the launching of a rehabilitated merchant marine, nor in the reestablishing of national bounds, but rather in the readjustment of the human consciousness to think in world terms affecting labor, capital, food and supplies. Are you still engaged with the microscope in magnifying petty local difficulties or is your vision being turned to search the far distant horizon, with due care that the cap is off the telescope and that you are not looking through the wrong end of the transit?The word "reconstruction" in its literal sense does not enter very deeply into the material life of the United States. We have had no cities destroyed, our political system has not been overthrown, and thank God, our actual loss of life has been comparatively small. We have, of course, our critical problems of readjustment. Capital will have to shift from war to peace time industries, labor must find a new channel as the many war factories are closed and the army disbanded, women must be fitted into their normal place in the shop and office. In many respects we shall never return again to prewar conditions. The spirit of daring and willingness to try new fields will undoubtedly be brought back by the boys - as it has also to a certain extent affected those at home. With big things going on and revolutionary personal histories of friends to contemplate, workers of both sexes have looked to broader fields and have not been unwilling to tear up the conservative roots of years of experiment. This is no less true of capital. The many war inventions which have been made good on the battlefield have fired the imagination of the public - and the money which is freed from war enterprises will be available to finance experiments, some good, some doomed to failure.In this readjustment, engineering works of reclamation and power development stand out most clearly as national necessities and it is electrical inventions and experiments which undoubtedly will have the larger share among the new enterprises. Some of the larger adjustments which far-sighted men see before us - and suggestions of the best methods of their accomplishment - are reviewed in the following pages by men in close touch with the problems they discuss. There are many radical suggestions made - but in building anew there is little reason for repeating errors and the present is a good time to take count of stock and make improvements.But beyond these problems of our immediate communities and prerequisite to their solution lies the great problem of world reconstruction. If we have been in large part spared, the world has not - and no lesson has been more forcibly driven home to us than that the worlds problem is our own. It is well for us to remember that if the United States might conceivably continue without a league of nations, Europe cannot and we shall not be more willing in the future than in the past to remain spectators. We cannot afford to consider complacently the possibility of further world wars and prepare for them - we must attempt the removal of the causes of such conflict.These are not visionary questions, nor ideals without the province of business, but very concrete essentials to the building of our national and local structure. And to no other branch of industry does the burden fall more heavily for building the all-embracing constructive vision that can harmoniously solve these problems than that of the electrical industry. In the West such movements as the California Electrical Cooperative Campaign are beginnings in the right direction. The time for thinkers has come. May the New Year still further bless us with vision to so further this spirit of helpfulness that our energies and efforts will be felt beyond the limitations of provincialism and pass across the seas to bless al...