REDISTRIBUTION OF MANKIND DICKSON. 559 



port, and this led to intense concentration. Coal was taken from the 

 most accessible coal field and used, as far as possible, on the spot. It 

 was chiefly converted into mechanical energy by means of the steam 

 engine, an extremely wasteful apparatus in small units, hence still fur- 

 ther concentration ; thus the steam engine is responsible in part for the 

 factory system in its worst aspect. The less accessible coal fields were 

 neglected. Also, the only other really available source of energy — 

 water power — remained unused, because the difficulties in the way of 

 utilizing movements of large quantities of water through small ver- 

 tical distances (as in tidal movements) are enormous; the only easily 

 applied source occurs where comparatively small quantities of water 

 fall through considerable vertical distances, as in the case of water- 

 falls. But, arising from the geographical conditions, waterfalls 

 (with rare exceptions, such as Niagara) occur in the " torrential " 

 part of the typical river course, perhaps far from the sea, almost 

 certainly in a region too broken in surface to allow of easy communi- 

 cation or even of industrial settlement of any kind. 



However accessible a coal field may be to begin with, it sooner or 

 later becomes inaccessible in another way, as the coal near the surface 

 is exhausted and the workings get deeper. No doubt the evil day is 

 postponed for a time by improvements in methods of mining — a sort 

 of intensive cultivation — but as we can put nothing back the end must 

 be the same, and successful competition with more remote but more 

 superficial deposits becomes impossible. And every improvement in 

 land transport favors the geographically less accessible coal fields. 



From this point of view it is impossible to overestimate the impor- 

 tance of what is to all intents and purposes a new departure of the 

 same order of magnitude as the discovery of the art of smelting iron 

 with coal, or the invention of the steam engine, or of the steam loco- 

 motive. I mean the conversion of energy into electricity, and its 

 transmission in that form (at small cost and with small loss) through 

 great distances. First we have the immediately increased availability 

 of the great sources of cheap power in waterfalls. The energy may 

 be transmitted through comparatively small distances and converted 

 into heat in the electric furnace, making it possible to smelt econom- 

 ically the most refractory ores, as those of aluminium, and converting 

 such unlikely places as the coast of Norway or the West Highlands of 

 Scotland into manufacturing districts. Or it may be transmitted 

 through greater distances to regions producing quantities of raw ma- 

 terials, distributed there widespread to manufacturing centers, and 

 reconverted into mechanical energy. The Plain of Lombardy pro- 

 duces raw material in abundance, but Italy has no coal supply. The 

 waterfalls of the Alps yield much energy, and this transmitted in the 

 form of electricity, in some cases for great distances, is converting 



