EDITORIAL 



IT is no idle boast that California is an empire unto herself. Opening 

 her career as the then greatest gold-producer on earth, she has added 

 to her mineral productions until no less than forty-seven commercial 

 minerals are now sent to market from within her borders. As a sec- 

 ondary stage of development, the agricultural resources of the State have 

 far exceeded the mineral as producers of revenue and as a factor in col- 

 onization. The lumber industry and the fisheries of California have kept 

 pace with mining and agriculture. And finally, manufacturing, which 

 characterizes the more mature stage of any civilization, is now developing 

 west of the Sierras with leaps and bounds which are not less than startling. 

 Manufacturing calls upon two fundamental resources — raw material 

 and mechanical power. Some less-favored areas have to send without 

 their borders for both, and yet their people subsist by utilizing these wholly 

 imported commodities. Other more fortunate localities in the industrial 

 world have one but not the other, and send abroad for the one they lack. 

 How favored of nature is California, then, with vast supplies of lumber, 

 divers minerals, wool, and a hundred other commodities at hand, while 

 the cheapest and best of all sources of mechanical power, the hydraulically 

 derived electric current, is hers in a superabundance that cannot be used up. 

 As elsewhere stated, there Is sufficient power now going to waste in the up- 

 per Sacramento to drive all the wheels now moving or expected to move in 

 California within the near future. Yet the total water-power of the State 

 exceeds this potential supply many fold. 



The most significant recent progress along electrical lines has been 

 made in improved methods of transmission, whereby the current leakage 

 is being minimized, and it becomes feasible and profitable to send power 

 from the canons to the distant valleys and cities of the State, there to 

 be utilized in all of the multitude of industrial processes, including trac- 

 tion. 



It is indeed in electric traction that the transmitted power attains 

 a romantic aspect and becomes wonder-inspiring, even in this day of in- 

 dustrial miracles. To watch a trolley-car eating space in Alameda or 

 Los Angeles County, and then to reflect that the mysterious, intangible 

 fluid that drives it on its way has come upon a wire from some remote 

 Sierran canon as much as three hundred and fifty miles away, is to mar- 

 vel afresh each time the thought is entertained. 



California is a region of long-distance electric transmission. Time 

 was when the leakage in transit was so great that the Sierran water- 

 power was available only locally. Now, however, it is common in any 

 section of the State to receive current for light and power from a source 

 some hundreds of miles distant. The longest transmission yet accom- 

 plished in California is that from Shasta County, via Chico, to San Fran- 

 cisco, a distance of three hundred and fifty miles; and this is claimed to 

 be the longest transmission in the world. Another long line extends from 

 the big Kern River plant to Long Beach, in Los Angeles County, a distance 

 of fully one hundred seventy miles. 



"And the end is not yet." As the State fills up in population new ne- 

 cessities will arise in transportation, manufacture and domestic facility. 

 And as fast as these needs arise it is but to harness some one other of the 

 countless mountain torrents of the State to amply fill the need. Stream- 

 derived power is thus unique, as against that supplied by any fuel, in never 

 suffering depletion. The power we now use has been there through all 

 human time, awaiting the call of man; and will be, in undiminished meas- 

 ure, for all time to come. 



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