NOTES 257 



3. Enforcement of terms of payment would reduce capital required by 



lumber industry of Washington and Oregon by 50 per cent. 



4. Credit information cheaply obtained. 



5. Trade acceptances used where discounts not granted. 



This proposed plan is too comprehensive to permit giving adequate 

 idea of it in a short review. If realized, however, it will be an impor- 

 tant step in organizing the credit of lumbermen so as to insure cheaper 

 short-term credit. Similar methods applied to long-term requirements 

 would be a step toward obtaining the lower interest rates necessary 

 before any efifective steps can be taken toward management of private 

 forests for continuous production. 



The Philadelphia Record had the following striking and timely 

 editorial in its issue of December i, 1917: 



"the need oe more power 



"No fanciful statistics are required to prove how very much better off the 

 Nation would be if its 'white coal' were now available for the development of 

 mechanical energy. It matters not whether our unused water powers are capable 

 of producing 50,000,000 or 100,000,000 horsepower, or whether hydro-electric 

 power, with the cost of transmission from point of production to point of utiliza- 

 tion added, is cheaper by half or twice as dear as steam power converted into 

 electricity or used directly. The fact is that our unused water powers are running 

 unproductively to waste and they cannot be harnessed in time to relieve the exist- 

 ing congestion in the production and distribution of ordinary black coal. 



"Crying over spilt milk is proverbially futile; and it would serve no good pur- 

 pose to revert to the long-drawn-out wrangle about the respective authority of 

 the Federal and State governments over water powers. Nor need one conjure 

 up again the spectre of a water-power monopoly, which former President Roose- 

 velt and Forester Pinchot employed so successfully to render development impos- 

 sible. It is not necessary for the Federal Government to impose a tax on the use 

 of waters which it does not own, and which the United States Supreme Court 

 declared belong to the States, in order to assert regulative jurisdiction over water 

 powers. Hydro-electric power is an instrumentality of commerce, and, as such, 

 the regulation of the same would come under the jurisdiction of Congress as 

 completely as railroads, telegraphs, or pipe lines, even though this instrumentality 

 should be, as the railroads, telegraphs, etc., are, partly employed in commerce 

 within a State. 



"A wrongful use of the Federal taxing power, therefore, is not necessary to 

 bring water powers under legitimately exerted Federal control. The Interstate 

 Commerce Commission makes rates which affect transportation 011 railroads, even 

 which begin and terminate wholly within a State, and it would be impossible for 

 a water-power company to sell electricity within a State at a higher rate com- 

 petitively with another company that would be prepared to supply it from beyond 

 a near-by State boundary. .\s for the creation of a monopoly, the Federal Gov- 



