Safety Aloft
632 THE COMMONWEAL October 0.3, 1929 piece of criticism, a number of discussion groups have been formed which may be attended instead of the chapel exercises. In them, doctrines and...
...Blessings which the Church has conferred upon women need to abide, but we have also...
...Finding engineers equal to it has long been a task of leading industrialists...
...He will drive too fast in fog and on slippery pavements, despite warnings...
...Over here the record is not so remarkable...
...But the groups will at least be the gainers by having partaken in candid discussion under the direction of men who are cultured, honest and humane...
...It is a problem for engineers...
...an automatic pilot which will keep the plane level without any attention from the aviator, and a new altimeter which will show altitude above the ground instead of above sea-level, obviating the danger of flying into hilltops...
...No radio beam will keep a driver from crashing into a telephone pole, and no automatic device will stop him from trying to beat a train to the crossing...
...SAFETY ALOFT ECENT statistics furnished by the British Board of Trade show that ships are safer than the railroad, the airplane or the automobile...
...There is a good reason for it: the seas are free of obstacles, and there is no congestion...
...Three instruments will solve almost all of the airplane's problems, and they are now being developed: the radio beam, which willkeep a pilot true on his course, bring him to his destination through darkness and fog, and enable him to land safely even when he cannot see the ground...
...Speed regulations which do not promise much in the first place are tried because nothing better offers...
...No one has any clear idea of what can be done to keep the roads and streets safe for either the pedestrian or the motorist...
...If the limit is high, nothing has been gained, if it is low enough for safety, it will be broken...
...Even today, outside of stunt and experimental flying, the airplane is reasonably safe...
...In them, doctrines and perplexities will be canvassed informally, under the leadership, respectively, of Dean Wicks, Professor H. Alexander Smith and Professor Paul Elmer More...
...and since a goodly number of "strong personalities" happen to be smart, agnostic and suggestively epicurean, feminine audiences have been known to wax rampantly apostolic for ideas which, a generation ago, would have sent a lady to bed with a hot compress and a cup of sassafras tea...
...Though a thousand are killed each year in New York, and more than half as many in Chicago, nothing can be done about it...
...The right men have been found in other situations...
...It is somehow easier, in these days, for a "strong personality" to leave an impression with women than with men...
...There is no need for wild experimenting, for hit-ormiss innovations...
...Adequate meteorological service must come first, of course, and devices along the lines of the autogiro which will obviate landing difficulties, and the danger consequent upon motor troubles...
...The really encouraging promise for the future of aeronautics is that there is no longer any confusion about what must be done to insure the maximum safety...
...How speed will ever become consistent with safety we do not know...
...and he will charge full speed at a pedestrian trusting that Providence and his brakes will prevent a tragedy if the walker should stumble or fall...
...and that women themselves may, ultimately, see the world in distorted perspective...
...Since this tendency is rooted in varied social and individual necessities, it cannot well be dubbed deplorable...
...632 THE COMMONWEAL October 0.3, 1929 piece of criticism, a number of discussion groups have been formed which may be attended instead of the chapel exercises...
...When these things are finally perfected, and when all inland cities are provided with suitable landing fields, the plane should be approximately as safe as a ship at sea...
...but of course a social world basically agricultural in character could afford no such ventures in independence as are now normal in our urban universe...
...It will probably prove to be a step beyond the alternative system, of trying to unite students of diverse forms of faith, and perhaps of none, in one type of religious service...
...How much essential religion will accrue to each student as a result cannot, of course, be determined beforehand...
...that these are likely to regard definitely feminine problems with a shrug of the shoulders...
...The task ahead of us, then, is to make this new freedom genuinely emancipatory--to see, on the one hand, that industrialized activity does not crush woman or treat her with poisonous injustice, and to curtail, on the other hand, the excesses of irresponsibility...
...For the same reason, the airplane should some day be safer than any form of land travel, at least safer than the automobile...
...It is fairly plain that political, educational and industrial leadership is destined to remain largely in the hands of men...
...Though what used to be called "feminism" is now commonly interpreted in the language of economics, enough of it spills over to color the main currents of civilization...
...This, of course, is merely a confirmation of other surveys which have been made in the past twenty years...
...The supreme ability of woman to reflect dominant trends and ideas is probably no greater than it ever was, but widening circles of activity carry her farther from the primordial influences of church and home...
...Limit the speed at which an automobile can travel to an absolutely safe mark, and you do away with all of its advantages...
...But it is otherwise with the automobile...
...airplane accidents are on the increase, but they are increasing only one-tenth as rapidly as operations are expanding...
...Christianity, which emancipated woman, set no arbitrary limits to her development...
...British commercial planes, for instance, have flown 4,458,ooo miles during the past five years, carried II3,OI2 passengers safely, had only two accidents and fifteen deaths...
...No doubt they will be found in this...
...ORGANIZED WOMANHOOD F THE especial perils to which women are exposed, none is perhaps so impressive now as want of guidance...
Vol. 10 • October 1929 • No. 25
