A PROPOSITION FOR AN ARTIFICIAL ISTHMUS. 475 



to contract to transmit any amount of power one hundred and 

 fifty miles with a total loss on the line, due to fall of voltage, or 

 " drop," and leakage, of not more than twenty-five per cent, and 

 this without being too extravagant of copper. The voltage on 

 such a line would be, however, much more than that referred to 

 above probably twenty-five thousand volts. 



The distance from the Scotch side of the proposed line to Lon- 

 don by air line is three hundred and sixty-five miles, and it is 

 only reasonable to expect that the first decade of the twentieth 

 century will see things so perfected as to admit of transmission 

 over this distance of any desired amount of power. As it is, the 

 great power-consuming counties of York and Lancashire, par- 

 ticularly the former, would to-day be accessible from the proposed 

 power generators. 



If we glance at the ultimate results of all this, we shall see 

 them to be enormously far reaching. The limit to Britain's com- 

 mercial greatness may be set, as things are now, at the giving out 

 of her coal mines. These are not by any means inexhaustible, and 

 the drain upon them is something awful. The amount used in 

 generating power alone is annually in the scores of millions of 

 tons, and this is over and above what is used for house-heating, 

 cooking, etc. 



Suppose now that there comes from the north an inexhaustible 

 supply of electric energy inexhaustible, that is, as regards the 

 driving power it draws on, and limited in practice only by whether 

 one is willing to pay the moderate price that its generation, trans- 

 mission, transformation, etc., cost we should have here a solution 

 of the whole question of the future of the coal fields. The elec- 

 trical power would be sufficiently cheap for general use, and in the 

 great textile manufacturing districts the hum of the hundreds of 

 thousands of cotton and woolen spindles would be supplemented 

 by the lower note of the driving motors. Electric heating for 

 culinary purposes is pre-eminently satisfactory, not only for its 

 cheapness, since one can use the heat just where it is needed and 

 avoid the waste of ninety-five per cent of the heat employed due 

 to hot air going up the chimney of a cooking range and to radia- 

 tion to an already overhot kitchen, but also on account of its 

 entire cleanliness and reliability. If the price of coal should go 

 up at all seriously, due to prolonged strikes, or to other causes, 

 it would pay to use electricity for even house and store heat- 

 ing. In the vast iron-smelting industry it could be applied to at 

 least greatly reduce the amount of fuel at present used. The 

 only important place where it could not certainly pretty well 

 displace coal would be in seagoing vessels, for they can not now, 

 and probably never will be able to, navigate the ocean on the trol- 

 ley principle, and it has to be said that it looks more like the job 



