Lord Haldane who has always taken a close practical interest in the development of electrical power was one of the speakers at the luncheon of the British Electrical Development Association at the Hotel Cecil. He spoke in glowing terms of the future of the electrical industry, and touched on the great social changes which he thinks will follow from the cheapening of electrical energy and its use place of steam. He dwelt upon the importance of the industry keeping in touch with the fruits of the latest scientific research. The more people there were in the industry, he /said, who had come from the universities, the more the industry would be prepared for changes that might come quite suddenly and might revolutionize it within a few months.
Speaking, he said, as a politician, he suggested that electrical industries suffered from want of knowledge in the public as to what electricity is and what it can do. "It is not true that labour creates wealth. It-is mind that creates wealth. The electrical industry, which is providing new forms of energy and power, is establishing the domination of mind in the production of the wealth of the world."
The Coal Conservation Commit tee of which he was chairman five years ago came to the conclusion that the industries of the country which were at present run on 80,000,000 tons of coal could be run on 25,000,000. We could not hope to reach that ideal figure, but we could move towards that ideal if the public could be got to understand what electricity was. From that would follow a great development of electrical power. The two electrical Acts "which were now law, opened up a new prospect. The electrical industry would develop. enormously as soon as the manufacturing world realised that electrical power could be supplied at a fraction of the cost now incurred through the wasteful process of steam engines.
The skilled workman in this country was 56 per cent. worse off than the skilled workman in the United States, who had the advantage of coal nearer the surface than it was here, but we had an abundance of electrical power that could be used; and when this fact was realised there would be an awaken. ing of the working classes. There was no industry with such a future. He thought that the future of the
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