CHEAPEST THING IN THE WORLD.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3398, 13 December 1911, Page 8

CHEAPEST THING IN THE WORLD.

THE MARVELS OF PROGRESS. Mr. Andrew Carnegie, receiving tho freedom of St. Albans, contrasted the present day condition of things with those existing at the time of the foundation of the abbey in the eighth century. Tho purchasing power of money at that period, he said, was surprising. Sheep were valued at a shilling apiece, and pigs at two shillings as late as the eleventh century. Half a sovereign was the price of a horse and £1 the normal price of a slave. It was the age of aheap prices, but the present age had its cheap prices also. What, for instance, did they say to having a newspaper delivered at their residence every morning, containing news from all parts of the world—flashed under the sea- and over the mountains —the news of the world presented to them at their breakfast table —all for a penny? The good old times of the .past had nothing to boast of as cheap as tliat—-probably the cheapest of all things, considering what was provided.

Think, too, of letters being carried 14,000 miles to Australia of 3000 miles to America- for a penny. Again, we were swept, along at fifty miles an hour for a halfpenny a mile upon excursion trains.

Think of the masterpieces of literature being procurable for sixpence a volume! Six pounds could scarcely have procured one of these volumes in the olden times. It was not good form for a gentleman to know how to read and! write in those days. Now we had public libraries which placed an ample reach of every man. woman arid child. He maintained that the progress of man was upward, and that the ascent would continue towards perfection. We were on the eve of the age when men would beat their swords with ploughshares and their spears with pruning hooks, and in this noble change the English-speaking people were to be the leaders.