140 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



execute them, they necessarily had to be set to. They accordingly 

 deserted their posts and were not to be replaced, because every one 

 shunned this hard labour. Electric power, taking the collar-work 

 off, easing sensibly the physical work, at once brought them back 

 to their old occupations. Labouring folk and servants alike 

 became reconciled to their old employment and re-entered service, 

 giving up grumbling ! The same power, as a matter of course, 

 renders precisely the same benefit where there is no " service," and 

 where the small householder or husbandman and his family are 

 alone there to discharge the duties attaching to their several posi- 

 tions. And how very useful this new substitute for human muscle- 

 power may prove in both cases is demonstrated by the fact that even 

 in the German East, where small holdings are comparatively scarce, 

 it has been frankly owned that the largest call upon electric installa- 

 tions, which there have had to be specially created, comes from small 

 peasant holders, who make up the main number of customers. On 

 our island we have electric installations pretty well all over the 

 country, having their seats, of course, in urban or industrial centres. 

 The installations there set up can without difficulty provide what 

 is needed in the surrounding rural district. That has, in fact, 

 already been done to some extent ; and it appears to have worked 

 well and to have supplied what is wanted. But even in secluded 

 places the difficulty of providing electric power is not now really 

 very formidable. In the United States, where there are many 

 isolated farms, and power is not accordingly very readily at com- 

 mand, it has been found that a course of water of about 10 feet 

 breadth and 2 feet depth with 5 feet head, and a flow of about 2 feet 

 per second, will generate sufficient power and light for such a farm 

 with its homestead. The Yankees have, of course, not been slow 

 to turn such an extremely valuable auxiliary to their farming to 

 account. Electricity is well drawn upon to light up rural dwellings 

 and till, even distant fields. 



It may be of passing interest to mention that the application of 

 electric power and light to agriculture appears to have begun with 

 their use in co-operative dairies — automatic generators that they 

 are of many allied forms of co-operation, such as distribution, 

 egg and poultry selling and the like. Germany appears to have 

 led the way in this — thirty or forty years ago. Those dairies found 

 electric light and power a material convenience to themselves ; and, 

 possessing it, and having a use for it only during certain hours of 

 the day, they were glad to supply outsiders with it for payment, to 

 reduce their own expenditure — villages, surrounding farms, railway 



