540 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION RE. 
sible in part for the factory system in its worst aspect. The less accessible 
coalfields were neglected. Also, the only other really available source of energy 
—water-power—remained unused, because the difficulties in the way of utilising 
movements of large quantities of water through small vertical distances (as in 
tidal movements) are enormous; the only easily applied source occurs where 
comparatively small quantities of water fall through considerable vertical dis- 
tances, as in the case of waterfalls. But, arising from the geographical con- 
ditions, waterfalls (with rare exceptions such as Niagara) occur in the ‘torren- 
tial’ part of the typical river-course, perhaps far from the sea, almost certainly 
in a region too broken in surface to allow of easy communication or even of 
industrial settlement of any kind. 
However accessible a coalfield may be to begin with, it sooner or later 
becomes inaccessible in another way, as the .coal near the surface is exhausted 
and the workings get deeper. No doubt the evil day is postponed for a time 
by improvements in methods of mining—a sort of intensive cultivation—but as 
we can put nothing back the end must be the same, and successful competition 
with more remote but more superficial deposits becomes impossible. And every 
improvement in land transport favours the geographically less accessible coal- 
field. 
From this point of view if is impossible to overestimate the importance of 
what is to all intents and purposes a new departure of the same order of 
magnitude as the discovery of the art of smelting iron with coal, or the inven- 
tion of the steam-engine, or of the steam-locomotive. I mean the conversion 
of energy into electricity, and its transmission in that form (at small cost and 
with small loss) through great distances. First we have the immediately 
increased availability of the great sources of cheap power in waterfalls. The 
energy may be transmitted through comparatively small distances and converted 
into heat in the electric furnace, making it possible to smelt economically the 
most refractory ores, as those of aluminium, and converting such unlikely 
places as the coast of Norway or the West Highlands of Scotland into manu- 
facturing districts. Or it may be transmitted through greater distances to 
regions producing quantities of raw’ materials, distributed there widespread to 
manutacturing centres, and re-converted into mechanical energy. The Plain 
of Lombardy produces raw materials in abundance, but Italy has no coal 
supply. The waterfalls of the Alps yield much energy, and this transmitted 
in the form of electricity, in some cases for great distances, is converting 
Northern Italy into one of the world’s great industrial regions. Chisholm 
gives an estimate of a possible supply of power amounting to 3,000,000 horse- 
power, and says that of this about one-tenth was already being utilised in the 
year 1900. 
But assuming again, with Sir William Ramsay, that coal must continue to 
be the chief source of energy, it is clear that the question of accessibility now 
wears an entirely different aspect. It is not altogether beyond reason to 
imagine that the necessity for mining, as such, might entirely disappear, the 
coal being burnt in situ and energy converted directly into electricity. In 
this way some coalfields might conceivably be exhausted to their last pound 
without serious increase in the cost of getting. But for the present it is enough 
to note that, however inaccessible any coalfield may be from supplies of raw 
material, it is only necessary to establish generating stations at the pit’s mouth 
and transport the energy to where it can be used. One may imagine, for 
example, vast manufactures carried on in what are now the immense agricultural 
Hee of China, worked by power supplied from the great coal deposits of 
han-si. 
There is, however, another peculiarity of electrical power which will exercise 
increasing influence upon the geographical distribution of industries. The 
small electric motor is.a much more efficient apparatus than the small steam- 
engine. We are, accordingly, already becoming familiar with the great factory 
in which, instead of all tools being huddled together to save loss through 
shafting and belting, and all kept running all the time, whether busy or not 
(because the main engine must be run), each tool stands by itself and is 
worked by its own motor, and that only when it is wanted. Another of the 
causes of concentration of manufacturing industry is therefore reduced in im- 
portance. We may expect to see the effects of this becoming more and more 
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