'LOOKING SQUARELY AT THE WATERPOWER PROBLEM 



1125 



pendent for its success upon the continuation of the 

 great wood-using industries in just as real a sense as they 

 in turn will depend upon forestry in the future to produce 

 their raw material. Two paths are open : conservation 

 through diminished use of wood, the encouragement of 

 substitutes, and the resultant condemning to perpetual 

 waste of all forest lands whose timber crop has been 



cut or destroyed; or conservation through wider use of 

 wood, the retention of wood as a primal necessity of 

 commerce and civilization, and energetic measures to cre- 

 ate and maintain the business of forest production to 

 provide the wood for the future. The latter course 

 means true forestry and to the accomplishment of these 

 aims the Association will direct its efforts. 



''Looking Squarely at the Waterpower 



Problem'' 



By Henry J. Pierce 

 Keiiewed by Henry Sturgis Drinker, President of Lehigh University 



THIS treatise admirably and succinctly summarizes 

 from the standpoint of the engineer and business 

 man the waterpower problem in the West. 

 Mr. Pierce in this work has presented in a condensed 

 yet very interesting and readable form and with great 

 fairness the present status of the waterpower discussion 

 in the West, speaking from the standpoint of the investor 

 and development engineer. The book opens with the 

 following foreword : 



"Our refusal to develop our wasting waterpowers constitute;; 

 the strangest feature of our national conduct. For the greater 

 part our waterpowers are idly wasting their energy. The reason 

 is that we have not yet been persuaded to enact laws under 

 which money may confidently be invested in them. Until we 

 do this our waterpowers will be as useless to us as though 

 situated on another planet." 



This is followed by an address to the members of Con- 

 gress and others in authority, in the course of which the 

 author says : 



"It is inevitable that the waterpower question must soon be 

 dealt with by Congress. Unless that dealing is wise and business- 

 like, the effort will be useless. As will later be shown, the water- 

 power business involves a multitude of investment risks. There 

 are nearly 5,000 standard investment securities for sale in the 

 open market. The waterpower business must compete for 

 money with all of these other standard investments. It ought 

 to be apparent that any waterpower law under which an 

 invested dollar is inevitably doomed to depreciation will not 

 encourage waterpower development. 



"If, in considering legislation, our lawmakers, while protecting 

 fully the public interests, will at the same time apply the homely 

 and familiar rules of honest business and will searchingly test 

 each section of a legislative bill by determining whether, under 

 the terms proposed, they would l)e willing to invest their own 

 money, or were they executors of an estate, the money held by 

 them in trust, the path to power development and all its mani- 

 fold benefits will be greatly smoothed." 



The author has an enlightening discussion on the topic 

 of "How the Xation Is Concerned" with this great ques- 

 tion followed by a further study of "The Practical Side 

 of the Question," in which he summarizes the available 

 water horsepower of the country, and its possible appli- 

 cation when developed to many markets and uses, among 

 them "The Electric Furnace," and "Transportation." 



The eminently valuable, wholly original, and practical 

 nature of this work by Mr. Pierce, centers mainly in his 

 discussion of the pregnant question, "What are We Quar- 

 reling About?" pages 25 to 34, which opens with this 

 paragraph : 



"More than one man who has, with open mind, investigated 

 this national waterpower controversy, has closed his review by 

 asking. 'What are they quarreling about?' Here is a controversy 

 of about eight years' standing, which has prevented economic 

 development in the United States to the extent of hundreds of 

 millions of dollars. It has caused and is causing sectional dis- 

 content and suspicion where nothing but harmony and industrial 

 cooperation should prevail. Some entire States feel that they 

 are harshly and inconsiderately treated liy the Federal Govern- 

 ment that they are being strangled by the hand of might. There 

 is a widespread contention that the western waterpower States 

 are being denied the sovereignty to which they are entitled under 

 tlic Federal Constitution, and are having their growth impeded 

 and are being impoverished because such large proportions of 

 the lands in such States are withdrawn by the Federal Govern- 

 ment for waterpower purposes. Such lands are not subject to 

 local taxation, although the communities and States arc burdened 

 with the maintenance of the law on those withdrawn lands. 

 There is bitter complaint that although those lands were with- 

 drawn from sale or entry under the pretext that they would 

 thereby be rendered readily available for power purposes and 

 thus their use for such purposes would be facilitated and encour- 

 aged, yet present laws make it impossible to use them laws of 

 fulsome promise but of deadly effect. 



"Such are the consequences. Yet strangely enough, the real 

 differences between the contending parties are so small that it 

 seems as if an hour's consideration by full-grown men ought to 

 remove all cause of controversy. Therefore, is it not time that 

 the leaders on both sides pause for a while and reason a little? 

 Perhaps it will be found that some are continuing the quarrel 

 merely from force of habit. Well, then, what are we quarreling 

 about?" 



This is followed by a series of questions by "Theory" 

 and answers by "Practice," which should appeal to all 

 true conservationists as a most fair-minded presentation 

 of the whole matter, and as showing, as indeed was de- 

 veloped in Congress last year in the hearings on the 

 Ferris bill, that there is today no great conflict of opinion 

 on these matters, but only an a])parent inability to get 

 together frankly and with a mutual desire to end an 

 unnecessary difference: 



