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Next year Arizona will celebrate 100 years of statehood. Born in 1909, Senator Barry Goldwater was just three years old when Arizona became the 48th state in the Union on February 14, 1912. In 1962 — two years before he would get the Republican nomination for president (and ultimately lose to Lyndon B. Johnson in a landslide), Goldwater wrote an article for the February 14, 1962, edition of the Tucson Daily Citizen titled “Arizona’s Next Fifty Years.”

Imagining the world of 2012, Goldwater’s article looked at everything from where Arizona might get the water to support its rapidly growing population (the ocean seemed the most logical solution), to Arizona’s relationship with Mexico (he envisioned an open border). The article reads as a love letter to the state he grew up in and adored, while acknowledging that there may be some hurdles ahead.

I asked Jon Christensen his opinion of Senator Goldwater’s 1962 article. Jon is the executive director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University and he points out that, “Goldwater wrote in an era when the ‘new frontier’ was still something America believed in and yearned toward, before Kennedy was gunned down the next year in Dallas. Growth was the rocket fuel of that dream — population growth, economic growth, wall to wall houses filling the desert with nuclear families.”

Senator Goldwater opens the article by writing about his own family:

Fifty years from now, if things go well, I will be concerned only with heavenly surroundings, so any shortcoming or overstatements of this forecast will be of no concern for me. But my children, then ranging from 68 to 75 years of age, and my grandchildren and great-grandchildren of all ages, will be living in this heaven on earth — Arizona. So I looked into my crystal ball, determined to project the image of my native state 50 years hence with the accuracy of experience and the hope of love, trusting in the ability of man to restrain his bad side so that the good things I predict will be allowed to come true, and conversely to stimulate his good side so that man will make them come true.

Having come to that decision, I loosened my legs from the restraining ceiling of my desk and departed for another long walk across the floor of the desert which has been a part of my life.

Goldwater expresses concern about what the picturesque landscape of Arizona might look like after a growing population spreads into the more rugged and untouched areas of the state:

A desert rain, just passed, accentuated the pungency of the greasewood and I stopped my walk with the dreadful first decision that the man of 2012 would not be able to walk from his doorstep into this pastel paradise with its saguaro, the mesquite, the leap of a jackrabbit, the cholla or the smell of freshly wet greasewood, because people will have transgressed on the desert for homesite to accomodate a population of slightly over 10 million people. The forests will be protected, as well as our parks and monuments. But even they will have as neighbors the people who today enjoy hardships to visit them.

Goldwater predicted that the city of Phoenix would be either the fourth or sixth largest city in the United States. The 2010 census places Phoenix as the sixth largest city in the country (with just under 1.5 million people) behind New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Philadelphia. Though Arizona experienced steady population growth since 1962, that growth has slowed considerably in the last five years, which is most likely attributed to the recession and a bad job market.

But it will be the deserts that will support the majority of the new homes. Phoenix will have a population of about three million and Tucson will grow to about one and one-half million. Phoenix and Tucson will remain the two largest cities in the state, with Phoenix being either the fourth or six largest city in the United States.

However, spectacular increases in population will occur in Yuma, Flagstaff, Casa Grande, Sierra Vista and some yet unborn cities in the Harqua Hala Valley, near Cave Creek and east of Tucson. The growth of Glendale, Peoria and Avondale will parallel that of Phoenix proper, so that 50 years from now all of these cities will be contiguous with each other and with Phoenix, and will form a city complex not unlike the present city of Los Angeles.

When the book Inside U.S.A. by John Gunther was published in 1947, Arizona was still the youngest state in the Union. The book notes that “Only 329 square miles of its 113,909 are water, which means that water is by far its greatest problem.” Gunther writes that irrigation has made Phoenix lush: “Pass over in an airplane; the burgeoning green of the irrigated valley overlays the the desert as if painted there with shiny lacquer. This development derives from [the] Roosevelt Dam, which was one of the earliest federal reclamation projects.”

Goldwater explains in his article that he hopes water will be piped in from the ocean to alleviate the growing need for water in Arizona:

Long before this period of 50 years passes by, the large coastal cities will be getting their drinking [water] leasing the inland streams for inland consumption. But to augment our major sources of water we will also, long before 2012, be using water piped from the ocean for domestic purposes.

As farmland gives way to homesite in the central valley, farming will be done in an extensive way in the already developed areas around Yuma and in, as yet, undeveloped areas in the Centennial and Harqua Hala Valley lands with a much greater diversification of crops that we now have. Cotton, our main crop today, will dwindle in importance by the time 50 more years pass because more new man-made fibers will replace to a marked degree the need for cotton that we know today.

Goldwater understood that America’s move west would be even more pronounced in the latter half of the 20th century, and saw technology as a major factor in that growth. Christensen finds fault with Goldwater’s prediction about industry in Arizona: “What’s curious about Goldwater’s vision is that he thought the Arizona economy would be based on manufacturing. Instead Arizona made an economy fueled by service jobs, taken up by people who moved from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt, to serve retirees following the same route, and by construction, to build those pastel Sun Cities where they would live.”

As the population center of the United States continues to move rapidly to the west, so will industry as to be near this new concentration of consumers. Arizona’s principal economic growth will be in the industrial field, with emphasis being on items of a technological nature. It will not be many years before industry will become an important part of the economies of most Arizona cities, whereas today it is more or less confined to a few.

Goldwater goes on to talk about Arizona government and interestingly believes that Indian reservations will radically transform, with the population of Native Americans growing rather than decreasing.

This industrial growth will, of course, depend upon the maintenance of a good governmental climate; but I expect the people of this state in the next 50 years will be able to maintain the same kind of good government in the state, county and local levels that the people of the first 50 years have to an almost complete degree.

Indian reservations as we know them today will no longer exist because the government will have deeded the lands to the Indians who now live on them. Indians will be with us in increasing instead of decreasing number, and as they become more and more educated, they will play a more and more important part in the life of Arizona.

Christensen is “intrigued by Goldwater’s view that Indian reservations would cease to exist, and Indians themselves would become just like other Arizonans; happy individual property owners. That was an old-fashioned view rather than a futurist vision by 1962.” Indeed, as an article in the Arizona Capitol Times noted earlier this month: “Anglos moving into the Arizona Territory during the late 1800s believed that the Native Americans already there should be acclimated into Anglo culture. During that time, Indian boarding schools were built and native children were removed from their homes and placed into these schools.”

Goldwater’s predictions of a wide open U.S.-Mexico border by 2012 may be the most surprising to contemporary readers, given the tenor of the current Republican presidential nomination debates, where candidates to various degrees have proposed tougher border controls to limit illegal immigration and narcotrafficking.

Our ties with Mexico will be much more firmly established in 2012 because sometime within the next 50 years the Mexican border will become as the Canadian border, a free one, with the formalities and red tape of ingress and egress cut to a minimum so that the residents of both countries can travel back and forth across the line as if it were not there.

Basking in the “frontier spirit” that Arizona has historically embraced, Goldwater calls on the rugged individualism that he sees as imperative to America’s progress:

Fifty years from now, even though Arizona’s population density will reach about 100 per square mile, there will still be lots of open space in which man can enjoy himself. Our watershed will improve, our forests will continue to grow, and even the Grand Canyon will be about three inches deeper.

Arizona will continue to be the haven for people who seek an outlet for initiative and a reward for work. The frontier challenges will exist then as they do today, for man’s progress never stops unless man stops it. Fortunately for our state, our men have always and will always want to go forward, not backward.

Goldwater finishes his article by writing about the generations to come that he’s sure will enjoy their lives in Arizona while he’s looking down from the heavens:

My children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be as happy living here as I have been during the first 50 years of statehood, because the people will remain warm and kind and thoughtful. And even though much of what we now know as desert will have disappeared, there will remain a sufficient amount of natural beauty to satisfy all of the desires of the 10 million people who will live here.

In fact, even though I hope to be on Cloud Nine or Ten or whatever they allot me, I am sure that 50 years from now I will look down on this delightful spot on earth and be envious of the people who call Arizona their home in the year 2012.

On November 13, 1946 pilot Curtis Talbot, working for the General Electric Research Laboratory, climbed to an altitude of 14,000 feet about 30 miles east of Schenectady, New York. Talbot, along with scientist Dr. Vincent J. Schaefer, released three pounds of dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) into the clouds. As they turned south, Dr. Schaefer noted, “I looked toward the rear and was thrilled to see long streamers of snow falling from the base of the cloud through which we had just passed. I shouted to Curt to swing around, and as we did so we passed through a mass of glistening snow crystals! Needless to say, we were quite excited.” They had created the world’s first human-made snowstorm.

After the experiments of G.E.’s Research Laboratory, there was a feeling that humanity might finally be able to control one of the greatest variables of life on earth. And, as Cold War tensions heightened, weather control was seen by the United States as a potential weapon that could be even more devastating than nuclear warfare.

In August of 1953 the United States formed the President’s Advisory Committee on Weather Control. Its stated purpose was to determine the effectiveness of weather modification procedures and the extent to which the government should engage in such activities. Methods that were envisioned by both American and Soviet scientists—and openly discussed in the media during the mid-1950s— included using colored pigments on the polar ice caps to melt them and unleash devastating floods, releasing large quantities of dust into the stratosphere creating precipitation on demand, and even building a dam fitted with thousands of nuclear powered pumps across the Bering Straits. This dam, envisioned by a Russian engineer named Arkady Borisovich Markin would redirect the waters of the Pacific Ocean, which would theoretically raise temperatures in cities like New York and London. Markin’s stated purpose was to “relieve the severe cold of the northern hemisphere” but American scientists worried about such weather control as a means to cause flooding.

The December 11, 1950 Charleston Daily Mail (Charleston, WV) ran a short article quoting Dr. Irving Langmuir, who had worked with Dr. Vincent J. Schaefer during those early experiments conducted for the G.E. Research Laboratory:

“Rainmaking” or weather control can be as powerful a war weapon as the atom bomb, a Nobel prize winning physicist said today.

Dr. Irving Langmuir, pioneer in “rainmaking,” said the government should seize on the phenomenon of weather control as it did on atomic energy when Albert Einstein told the late President Roosevelt in 1939 of the potential power of an atom-splitting weapon.

“In the amount of energy liberated, the effect of 30 milligrams of silver iodide [used to seed clouds] under optimum conditions equals that of one atomic bomb,” Langmuir said.

In 1953 Captain Howard T. Orville was chairman of the President’s Advisory Committee on Weather Control. Captain Orville was quoted widely in American newspapers and popular magazines about how the United States might use this control of the skies to its advantage. The May 28, 1954 cover of Collier’s magazine showed a man quite literally changing the seasons by a system of levers and push buttons. As the article noted, in an age of atomic weapons and supersonic flight, anything seemed possible for the latter half of the 20th century. The cover story was written by Captain Orville.

A weather station in southeast Texas spots a threatening cloud formation moving toward Waco on its radar screen; the shape of the cloud indicates a tornado may be building up. An urgent warning is sent to Weather Control Headquarters. Back comes an order for aircraft to dissipate the cloud. And less than an hour after the incipient tornado was first sighted, the aircraft radios back: Mission accomplished. The storm was broken up; there was no loss of life, no property damage.

This hypothetical destruction of a tornado in its infancy may sound fantastic today, but it could well become a reality within 40 years. In this age of the H-bomb and supersonic flight, it is quite possible that science will find ways not only to dissipate incipient tornadoes and hurricanes, but to influence all our weather to a degree that staggers the imagination.

Indeed, if investigation of weather control receives the public support and funds for research which its importance merits, we may be able eventually to make weather almost to order.

An Associated Press article by science reporter Frank Carey, which ran in the July 6, 1954 edition of Minnesota’s Brainerd Daily Dispatch, sought to explain why weather control would offer a unique strategic advantage to the United States:

It may someday be possible to cause torrents of rain over Russia by seeding clouds moving toward the Soviet Union.

Or it may be possible — if an opposite effect is desired — to cause destructive droughts which dry up food crops by “overseeding” those same clouds.

And fortunately for the United States, Russia could do little to retaliate because most weather moves from west to east.

Dr. Edward Teller, the “father of the H-bomb” testified in 1958 in front of the Senate Military Preparedness Subcommittee that he was “more confident of getting to the moon than changing the weather, but the latter is a possibility. I would not be surprised if [the Soviets] accomplished it in five years or failed to do it in the next 50.” In a January 1, 1958, article in the Pasadena Star-News Captain Orville warned that “if an unfriendly nation solves the problem of weather control and gets into the position to control the large-scale weather patterns before we can, the results could be even more disastrous than nuclear warfare.”

The May 25, 1958, issue of The American Weekly ran an article by Frances Leighton using information from Captain Howard T. Orville. The article, in no uncertain terms, described a race to see who would control the earth’s thermometers. The illustration that ran with the piece pictured an ominous looking satellite which could “focus sunlight to melt the ice in frozen harbors or thaw frosted crops — or scorch enemy cities.”

Behind the scenes, while statesmen argue policies and engineers build space satellites, other men are working day and night. They are quiet men, so little known to the public that the magnitude of their job, when you first hear of it, staggers the imagination. Their object is to control the weather and change the face of the world.

Some of these men are Americans. Others are Russians. The first skirmishes of an undeclared cold war between them already have been fought. Unless a peace is achieved the war’s end will determine whether Russia or the United States rules the earth’s thermometers.

Efforts to control the weather, however, would find skeptics in the U.S. National Research Council, which published a 1964 report:

We conclude that the initiation of large-scale operational weather modification programs would be premature. Many fundamental problems must be answered first….We believe that the patient investigation of atmospheric processes coupled with an exploration of the technical applications may eventually lead to useful weather modification, but we emphasize that the time-scale required for success may be measured in decades.

The January 18, 1925, Zanesville Times Signal (Zanesville, Ohio) ran an article about a proposed 88 story skyscraper in New York. Titled “How We Will Live Tomorrow,” the article imagined how New Yorkers and other city-dwellers might eventually live in skyscrapers of the future. The article talks about the amazing height of the proposed structure, but also points out the various considerations one must make when living at a higher altitude.

The article mentions a 1,000 foot building, which even by today’s standards would be quite tall. The tallest building in New York City is currently the Empire State building at 1,250 feet. Until September 11, 2001, the North Tower of the World Trade Center stood as the tallest building in New York City at 1,368 feet tall. Interestingly, the year this article ran (in 1925) was the year that New York overtook London as the most populous city in the world.

The contemplated eighty-eight-story building, 1000 feet in height, which is to occupy an entire block on lower Broadway, may exceed in cubical contents the Pyramid of Cheops, hitherto the largest structure erected by human hands.

The Pyramid of Cheops was originally 481 feet high, and its base is a square measuring 756 feet on each side. The Woolworth Building is 792 feet in heigh, but covers a relatively small area of ground.

The proposed building, when it has been erected will offer to contemplation some rather remarkable phenomena. For instance, on the top floor an egg, to be properly boiled, will require two and a half seconds more time than would be needed at the street level.

That is because the air pressure will be less than at the street level by seventy pounds to the square foot, and water will boil at 209 degrees, instead of the ordinary 212. In a saucepan water cannot be heated beyond boiling point, and, being less hot at an altitude of 1000 feet, it will not cook an egg so quickly.

When one climbs a mountain one finds changes of climate corresponding to  what would be found if one were to travel northward. Thus, according to the reckoning of the United States Weather Bureau, the climate on top of the contemplated eighty-eight-story building will correspond to that of the Southern Berkshires in Massachusetts.

The newspaper ran a series of illustrations to accompany the article that demonstrate the communal features of skyscraper living and new considerations (however ridiculous) of living at 1,000 feet. The skyscraper was imagined to feature billiard rooms, parlors for dancing and bowling alleys. One of the illustrations explains that “the housewife will be annoyed by no petty disputes with butcher and grocer over the accuracy of their accounts.” The latter is a reference to the fact that meals will no longer be prepared at home, but “bought at wholesale rates by a manger, or by a committee representing the families of the block, and the cooks and other servants employed to do the work tend to everything, relieving the housewives of all bother.”

The article looked to history for perspective on what wonders the next hundred years of skyscraper living may bring:

Compare the New York of today with what it was a century ago. May one not suppose that a century from now it will have undergone a transformation equally remarkable? Already the architects are planning, in a tentative way, buildings of sixty or seventy stories that are to occupy entire blocks, providing for all sorts of shops and other commercial enterprises, while affording space for the comfortable housing of thousands of families. Such a building will be in effect a whole town under one roof. The New York of today has great numbers of apartment houses. It has multitudes of family dwellings. The whole system must before long undergo a radical change. A block system of construction will replace it, achieving an economy of space which is an inexorable necessity. It is the only system under which the utmost possible utilization of ground area can be obtained.

Predictions of communal kitchens in the future were quite popular in utopian novels of the late 19th century, like Edward Bellamy’s 1888 tome “Looking Backward.” But this 1925 vision of tomorrow’s kitchen shifts focus to the kind of ordering out that we may be more familiar with today. The illustration contends that “all the housewife of tomorrow will have to do is select the kind of meal she wishes and order it, just as she now phones the butcher for a roast or fowl.”

Interestingly, the pneumatic tube still rears its head in this vision of urban living in the future. The Boston Globe article from 1900 that we looked at a few weeks ago included predictions of the pneumatic tube system Boston would employ by the year 2000. Delivery of everything from parcels to newspapers to food by pneumatic tube was a promise of the early 20th century that would nearly die during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

On a recent occasion the possibilities of the pneumatic tube for the transportation of eatables was satisfactorily demonstrated by the Philadelphia Post-office, which sent by this means a hot dinner of several courses a distance of two miles. For the community block a trolley arrangement might be preferred, with a covered chut and properly insulated receptacles, lined with felt, will keep foods at a piping temperature for a dozen hours.

The December 24, 1900 Boston Globe included an article that imagined what Boston would look like in the year 2000. Written by Thomas F. Anderson, the article was titled “Boston at the End of the 20th Century.” Anderson envisioned a city with moving sidewalks, pneumatic tube delivery of everything from food to newspapers, and airships soaring high above the city. Overall, Anderson’s predictions are quite optimistic. He predicted that Boston at the turn of the 21st century would be so beautiful that the word “slum” wouldn’t even be found in the local dictionary.

With all the fantastically futuristic predictions made in the article, it’s somewhat interesting that the most quaint idea in the entire piece is the idea that Boston of the future will have both a morning and evening edition of the local newspaper. This newspaper of the future was, of course, to be delivered by fancy pneumatic tubes, but you’d be hard pressed to find a young person in the year 2000 who even knew such a thing as an evening edition of the newspaper ever existed. From radio to television to Internet, it’s fascinating to look at the rapid and revolutionary changes in the way Americans consumed news over the course of the 20th century.

This article is an artifact that, like most predictions from the past, gives us some wonderful insight into the hopes and fears of Bostonians at the turn of the 20th century. Some highlights from the article appear below.

Boston of the Year 2000

In that golden age for Boston, when the population of the United States will be somewhere between 350,000,000 and 500,000,000, when the tides in the harbor will be made for furnish[ing] heat light and power, when every person will own his own automobile, or whatever it may be called in that day; when people have learned how to live longer and suffer less from sickness; when sewage and garbage nuisances will no more exist; when [the] new Franklin Institute will long have entered upon its career of usefulness, and when the great world’s fair in Boston shall have become a pleasant memory of the past, it is not too much of a task on the imagination to believe that women will have taken a much more important position in the business and political life than they hold today.

The three problems that bear the most important relation to the city’s future growth are those which concern the increase in its population, the development of its commerce and the improvement of its transportation facilities.

Transportation

There’s no mention of the Big Dig anywhere in the article, but Anderson envisioned a world where everyone in Boston had cars, airships sailed over the city and moving sidewalks made walking so much easier.

It might be easy to dismiss the transportation problem by saying that a century hence we will be moving over the housesteps of Boston, a la Santa Claus, in airships, but even airships would not solve the transit question in a city like Boston, however practicable they may have become at that date.

Anderson spoke with General Passenger Agent Dana J. Flanders of the Boston and Maine Railroad and quotes heavily from him about railways of the future:

“As far as Boston is concerned, there is certain to be a great change in transportation conditions. In the first place, it is conceivable that all the railroads of New England may be under one management 100 years from now, perhaps [under] control of the government, although I don’t believe that this will be a good thing.

“We shall probably have one great terminal for all the railroads entering the city, and what the railroads call the ‘suburban zone,’ at present extending about 12 miles out of the city, may then extend for 25 or 30 miles out, perhaps farther.”

Baseball May Be Played at Night

There seems to be no reason to believe that the Bostonian of the future will take any less interest in athletic sports and pastimes than his predecessor of the 19th century. Indeed, with the greater proportion of leisure he is likely to enjoy in that day, his interest in these matters should increase.

Most of the baseball cranks of today are confident that the national game will continue to hold its prestige through the coming century, and that it is likely to be played at night as well as by day, inasmuch as the illuminating methods of the future are reasonably certain to practically banish darkness from our cities.

Other forms of outdoor sports will doubtless be invented, but baseball, the “rooter” maintain, will never lose its hold upon the affections of the people.

Population

Boston’s population in 1900 was just 560,892. Though Anderson’s article predicted a population of more than 5 million in Boston by the year 2000, the actual population of Boston proper in the year 2000 was 3.4 million 589,141. They predicted that Greater Boston (Boston and its surrounding suburbs) would have a population of 8 million by the year 2000, but the area had just 4.4 million people by the 2000 census.

In the first place, when the year 2000 dawns there will be no more unoccupied land in Boston, save that reserved for public parks and playground. The only “vacant lots” that will occur at that period will be those created by the tearing down of old buildings to make space for new ones.

Education

Anderson spoke with Edwin P. Seaver, the superintendent of Boston schools, about the future of education in Boston:

“Altogether, there is every reason to believe that the principle of universal education, as opposed to what may be called artistocratic education, is to receive a more and more general application; and among other things, it is going to discover and bring forth from the lower ranks of our people not only talent, but genius.

Already there are encouraging indications of a much needed awakening of public sentiment in regard to the urgent need of rescuing our schools from their present unfortunate environment, and I cannot feel that the future is destined to bring us better things in school administration, along with the higher intellectual development of our whole community.”

Immigration

During the Irish potato famine of the 1840s over a million Irish immigrants came through Deer Island. In the year 1900, Deer Island in Boston Harbor was used for processing immigrants and Anderson’s article predicted that a large receiving station would be built there by the year 2000.

The long talked of public docks on the unfilled East Boston water front will long have been in use, and other will stretch far beyond them to Deer Island, where probably will be established a great receiving station for both immigrants and merchandise.

Public Buildings

The man or woman who views from the state house dome the great city of Boston in that day will see many fine public buildings that do not exist now, including a new city hall and public libraries, and scores of attractive schoolhouses in which the scholars will neither grow blind as a result of insufficient light nor contract disease as from the effects of bad drainage.

Wireless Telephones

The article has some similarities to an article by John Elfreth Watkins, Jr. that appeared in the December, 1900 issue of Ladies’ Home Journal. Through the work of men like Lee De Forest and Guglielmo Marconi, wireless telegraphy was showing such promise at the turn of the 20th century that wireless telephone communication was seen as almost a certainty in the 20th century.

The telephone will have become a relic of the past, and by means of wireless telegraphy the citizen may communicate with any city or town in the land.

Pneumatic Tubes

Though most Americans of the year 2011 only interact with pneumatic tubes at the bank drive-thru window, the year 1900 had high hopes for this wonder technology as a means of transporting goods. Edward Bellamy’s futuristic Boston in the 1888 book Looking Backward also featured a series of tubes that were used for deliveries.

The pneumatic tube service, by the way, will have reached its perfection long before the first half of the new century has flown. It will have become a most important factor in the domestic life of the people which also will have undergone great changes.

Through such tubes a householder will undoubtedly receive his letters, his readymade lunches, his laundry, his morning and evening paper, and even the things he may require from the department store, which will furnish at the touch of a button any essential solid or liquid that can be named.

By means of his electro-pneumatic switchboard, with which all well regulated houses will be equipped, he may sit in his comfortable arm chair and enjoy either the minister’s sermon or the latest opera in the new Symphony hall of the vintage of 1960.

Anderson also spoke with Postmaster George A. Hibbard about Boston’s postal service of the year 2000:

“The system of pneumatic transmission of mail already introduced is undoubtedly to have an extensive development, and I have little doubt that the time will come when mail will be sent from the central or branch post office through such tubes directly to the house or office of the citizen who cares to pay for the cost of such service.

“It may be only a matter of months before the central office in Boston is connected with the various branches by pneumatic tube service, as I have already asked the department at Washington for permission to connect the Back Bay and South end stations with such a service. There is little question that the efficiency of the postal service will be thereby materially increased.

I do not anticipate that the cheapening and extension of the telegraph or telephone service is going to adversely affect the number of letters written and mailed in the future. On the contrary, the cheapening and improvement of the postal service may operate as a factor against the growth of the other service.”

Central Air Conditioning

Not only will hot and cold water (the one furnished by a heating company and the other sterilized before being sent through the pipes) be constantly at his command, but hot and cold air and even liquid air will be possible to turn on an imitation east wind at any time the outside temperature reaches an uncomfortable height.

Smoke and Noise Will Have Disappeared

The article imagines a Boston complete devoid of smoke and steam rising from its buildings. “New methods of generating heat and power” will have rendered such primitive exhaust, the pungent breath of major cities in the year 1900, completely obsolete. The city is also imagined as incredibly quiet, the noise and confusion having gone the way of the horse and buggy.

Health

Anderson spoke with Dr. Samuel H. Durgin, chairman of the Boston Board of Health, about the future of health care in Boston. Not surprisingly, Dr. Durgin believes that cleanliness will bring about much improved health for the citizens of the year 2000.

“From a health standpoint the needs of Boston are many, and in some cases urgent. We need, among other things, more hospital accommodations, especially for consumptive and contagious cases, and the building of these must be considered in the year future.

“The difference between clean and dirty streets constitutes an important element in the health of a city, and the presence or the absence of the smoke nuisance bears directly upon the comfort of the community. It is reasonable to believe that we shall get rid of both our smoky chimney and our dirty streets during the coming century.”

Boston May Have But One Bank

What is to be Boston’s status as a financial center at the close of the year 2000?

Mr. A. P. Weeks of the Merchants national bank, whose opinions on banking matters are always highly regarded by his associates, said in reply to this query: “Unquestionably great changes are to take place in banking methods in the coming century, and yet the underlying principle of the utilization of credit rather than of actual money will continue to be a fixed one in business matters.

“It is all a matter of guesswork, of course, but it is quite conceivable that the present tendency to consolidation in Boston may continue until there shall be in the years to come but one large bank in this city, with branches at convenient points throughout the community.

“As compared with New York, it is likely that Boston as a financial center will lose a little rather than gain prestige, but it will always be a very important city in this respect, from the fact of its commercial and industrial rank.”

Weather

Most cities in the U.S. love to lay claim to the saying, “We have an old saying in [city X], if you don’t like the weather, just wait 10 minutes…” This article closed on its own light-hearted weather joke, seemingly poking a little fun at its local forecast official and the difficulty of predicting the weather.

There is one thing which The Globe, in its 20th century canvass, has been obliged to “slip up on,” and that is the subject of Boston weather in the coming period of progress.

Our genial and cultured local forecast official, Sergt J. W. Smith, who is alway a copious fountain of information concerning the weather of the past 25 years and the “probabilities” for the next 24 hours, has been obliged to throw up his hand on the question of what climatic conditions in Greater Boston are likely to be in the year 2000.

He really did make a serious effort to help The Globe out in this important matter, but after spending a whole week immersed in a mass of therometric and barometric computations, celestial charts, hydrographic reports and humorous weather stories from the back files of the Boston papers, Sergt Smith was obliged to give it up as a bad job and go off for a two-days’ vacation.

He is inclined to think, however, that the year 2000 may still bring forth an occasional Boston day in which rain sunshine, snow, hot waves, cold snaps, thunder and lightning, hail, fog, east winds, west winds and south winds will each play their particular part in the weather drama of the 24 hours, and that in this respect at least Boston will remain the same dear old Boston.