OUTSPINNING THE SPIDER

It is the wire age.

Modern life, in all its intricate bearings, runs on wire. Wire everywhere; in

the heavens above, the earth beneath and the waters under the earth. In all

the legerdemain of science, which has put nature in bondage, wire is the

indispensable agent.

A curious, slow, finical little trade at which the smiths of forgotten races

toiled and pottered and ruined their eyesight for unnumbered thousands

of years has become, within less than a century, under the spur of modern

need and modern driving power, the pack-bearer of the world and the

mainspring of every activity from the cradle to the grave.

Wire still makes toys and gewgaws as it always did, but it is no longer the

plaything of vanity alone. Cancel wire and wire rope and their

concomitant, ¿flat wire,¿ from the inventory of human assets tomorrow,

and the world would stop stock-still.