354 LOUIS BELL 



moderately at least, for twenty four hours per day, at no 

 great added expense. A few additional acres will sometimes 

 work wonders. I call to mind, right in New England, several 

 instances in which, at a low figure, enough storage is attainable 

 to carry a plant over the entire dry summer season. The 

 trouble heretofore in the electrical power business has been 

 that men were hunting for big streams with several thousand 

 horsepower available for long transmissions to the larger 

 cities, and altogether overlooked scores of available small 

 powers, relatively much cheaper to develop and with far 

 nearer markets. 



The number of big transmissions is necessarily limited — 

 there is but one Niagara, but one great cataract in Zambesi. 

 Though the former may be loaded to its utmost, and the 

 latter may turn every wheel from the equator to the cape, 

 the bulk of the world's power will still remain in small units. 

 The world's coal supply, while in the aggregate probably 

 much larger than is generally supposed, is being drawn upon 

 at a rate that implies, merely from increased difficulties of 

 mining and lengthened transportation, a steady increase in 

 price ; but the rains will still fall and the rivers flow when our 

 coal has to come from Thibet or Matabeleland. 



Long before that time, the industrial salvation of a coun- 

 try will be the utilization of its smaller powers. And every 

 beginning made now will help to put off the day when the 

 earth will have to call on the skies for heat as well as motive 

 power, or shift its activities nearer the tropics. Meanwhile 

 the prosperity of our own and other countries depends upon 

 opening wider areas to human activity, instead of still further 

 confining it to great centers of population. 



