WATER POWER 185 



power for complete development of the whole coun- 

 try's resources. 



Of this, on January i, 1928, the developed wa- 

 ter power of the United States plants of 100 horse- 

 power or more was 12,296,000 horse-power, an in- 

 crease of 4.9 per cent for the year. 



Nature has not been unfair in her distribution 

 of power sources over the United States. Forty per 

 cent of the country's potential water power is in 

 three Pacific states: Washington, Oregon and Cali- 

 fornia. Eighty per cent of our enormous coal sup- 

 ply lies in six eastern states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, 

 Indiana, Illinois, West Virginia and Kentucky. 

 The West will develop water power with all speed; 

 the East will continue to depend chiefly on coal. 



"In the east," says Jerome G. Kerwin in his 

 "Federal Water Power Legislation" (Columbia 

 University Press, 1926) "by developing water power 

 a huge saving of coal would be possible ; in the west, 

 development of water power means saving in oil." 

 According to Mr. Kerwin, water power is no 

 cheaper than steam power. But a third of the 

 freight equipment of railroads is used for carrying 

 coal, which can be saved for other carrying purposes 

 to any extent that water power can be substituted 

 for steam. 



"We have now," writes Herman Stabler in Ec- 

 onomic Geography, October, 1927, "a most healthy 

 condition in the power industry water and fuels 

 competing for supremacy in cheapness of develop- 



