120 BULLETIN 102, VOL. 1, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



which is not the case/ it will be seen that the nondevelopment of 

 three-quarters of the potential water power of the country remains to 

 be accounted for on another basis. In other words, the quality of 

 Federal legislation, even under sweeping concessions to its untoward 

 effect, provides but a minor element in the complete explanation.^ 



The specific obstructions to the unfoldment of water power will 

 be looked at later, but back of these instrumentalities is a funda- 

 mental economic setting which is essential to the view. The main 

 features of this background are two in number. One is concerned 

 with a relation between the power resources ; the other, with the force 

 of convention in respect to power usage. 



In the first place, coal and oil have been so bountiful in this coun- 

 try that only the richest portions of these resources are worked; a 



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Fig. 14. — The distribution of the watee-powek resources of the United States. 



project contemplating the development of a water-power site faces 

 this situation.^ It is evident that the cream of the water-power re- 



^ The water-power rights subject to Federal jurisdiction are largely located in regions 

 of the West remote from industrial centers where they are not currently wanted anyway. 



' Of course, the whole default may be attributed to the Government's fo-ift of action, 

 but the total effect of ill-advised legislation, while significant, has been exaggerated. 



'^ Of course, the whole default may be attributed to the Government's lack of action, 

 uneconomical basis of opportunism that for the time being a superabundance of coal 

 and oil has been maintained on the market. It may sound as if one were making light of 

 the facts to speak of there being au overproduction of coal and oil at a time when 

 everyone has been meeting on every hand a shortage of these basic materials. Yet it is 

 well within conservative figures to assert, even without reference to water-power poten- 

 tialities, that this country has long produced more than double the amount of coal and oil 

 really needed under proper arrangements ; and, of necessity, the surplus has had to be 

 consumed in the form of waste. Ovei-production leads to waste ; waste leads to overpro- 

 duction ; and so the circle goes on unbroken. With no pressing necessity for introducing 

 economies in the use of coal and oil, there was still less of urgency to call the more basic 

 economy of water power into play. 



