RELATION OF DISCOVERY AND INVENTION

operating more than eighteen thousand miles of airways,of which eight thousand miles were lighted for nighttravel. The New York Trust Company in its reports tooknote that airplane production for 1928 was about fivetimes that of 1927, and that demand for ahnost everytype of aviation market was rapidly expanding.

Among investors there was knowledge that many ofthe inventions and discoveries made by the agencies ofresearch would quickly find practical use. With the cer-tainty that epoch-making inventions and methods ofhigher organization were being applied in the arts,opportunities to invest were multiplied, and thousandsof new investors increased the transactions of the stockexchanges.

This varied and exciting chapter in modern industrialexpansion is summed up by the Hoover Committee onRecent Economic Changes in its review (p. 844):

“By no means all the increase in efficiency took the form of anet gain in current livelihood. To use the technique founded onscience, men had to build machines, factories, railways, roads, ware-houses and sewers. In developing new resources, they had to digmines; to break the prairies and fence the farms; to make homesin strange habitats. And this work of re-equipping themselves formaking consumers’ goods was never done. Every discovery put touse on a commercial scale meant a new equipment job, often of greatextent. But after all this work on the means of production was done,there remained an even larger flow of the things men eat and wear,house and amuse themselves with.

“The net gain in ability to provide for their desires brought menthe possibility of raising their standard of consumption, of reducingtheir hours of work, of giving their children more education, of in-creasing their numbers. They took a slice of each of these goods,rather than all of one. They worked somewhat less hard as thedecades went by; they raised their standards of consumption appre-ciably; they established compulsory education and reduced illiteracy;they added to the population. . .

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