352 LOUIS BELL 



In caring for small industries and developing local re- 

 sources, continental Europe is far ahead of the United States. 

 In France, Germany, and Switzerland, there has been a keen 

 interest in preserving manufactures against the inroads of 

 centralization, and a good many electrical plants, both large 

 and small, have had this aim in view. The task is rendered 

 easier by close governmental control of transportation. In 

 America, on the contrary, the tendency toward industrial 

 centralization is at present very strong, and almost wholly 

 uncontrolled. Each census shows worse conditions in this 

 respect, without compensating advantages. It is small glory 

 to have rapidly growing cities fed by depletion of the rest of 

 the country, when at the same time economic waste is in- 

 creased. 



The practical problem to be solved is to make the non- 

 urban regions industrially more useful ; and as already pointed 

 out, electric power distribution and communication gives at 

 least one efficient decentralizing agency. In a concrete case 

 things would work out somewhat as follows: 



A factory starts up in a small town with transportation 

 facilities now reasonably good. With some aid from local 

 interests, it takes up and improves a neglected water power 

 a few miles away; and, not needing the whole output, sells 

 what it can for power and light, thus obtaining its own power 

 at a very low figure. It brings in workmen, not as waifs, but 

 as permanent residents, casting their lot definitely with the 

 community. Presently, ability to get cheap motive power 

 starts some one else at working a small shop ; a few more work- 

 men come, business in general begins to feel the effects of the 

 movement, and before long another water power is pressed 

 into service and tied in with the first, picking up another 

 village on the way with a casual shop and a little lighting. 



By this time the influx of workmen encourages the 

 starting of an extra store or two; then another factory, 

 scenting cheap power, comes along and settles down to busi- 

 ness. The united water powers are pretty well loaded, but 

 then the community is now thoroughly interested; some 

 enterprising individuals pick up a third power ten or a dozen 

 miles off, develop it, and add it to the others, catching an 



