POWER. 129 



choice in practice has uniformly fallen in favor of the second 

 procedure. 



The reason for this uniformity is obvious. It is cheaper for the 

 user of energy to rely upon the transportation facilities already at 

 hand, employing them in the movement of the crude bulky material, 

 than to provide himself with special facilities for the transmission 

 of the refined electric derivative. But it does not follow, to be sure, 

 that because the procedure so uniformly followed is individually 

 cheaper, this course is economically preferable. In the absence of 

 railway facilities, for example, it would be decidedly cheaper for 

 the individual consumer to haul his coal from the nearest mine by 

 truck than to build a railway line for the purpose. Yet no one would 

 think of arguing in this case that reliance upon truck haulage is 

 preferable to the opportunities that would be afforded by railway 

 transportation. The issue between electric transmission and rail- 

 way haulage is precisely similar. 



The provision of special facilities of transportation finds its justi- 

 fication in the magnitude of the service to be rendered. Were the 

 item of haulage under view small in size or restricted in locality 

 the whole matter need not come up as a broad problem. But the 

 haulage of power in material form amounts to nearly a half billion 

 tons and covers the country. There is no default, then, on the side 

 of magnitude. Special facilities, too, have been provided for oil, 

 the power material next in importance to coal. To serve the ends of 

 this large resource a network of pipe lines, thousands of miles in 

 aggregate length, is spread over half the country. In this case, 

 however, crude oil is not in the nature of a general utility, but serves 

 a specialized industrial demand centered in refineries. In conse- 

 quence, pipe-line transportation found its creation and nourishment 

 at the hands of the large private interests at stake. For electric 

 power, on the contrary, there was no such activating interest. 

 Though bulking large, it enjoyed a diverging distributive use quite 

 the opposite of the convergent refinery consumption of crude oil. 

 Moreover, the railroads were already established in coal fields when 

 electricity came on the scene; their presence, therefore, offered 

 scant encouragement to the growth of a more modern type of com- 

 mon carrier. On the contrary, it may be surmised that the whole 

 matter may have been arbitrarily held back by the pecuniary dis- 

 advantage that would accrue to the established undertaking in event 

 of change. Indeed, it may well be that this consideration has not 

 been without weight in retarding the electrification of the railway 

 lines themselves. A given railroad, under conditions of active com- 

 petition, could scarcely be expected to take the lead in giving up 

 such a lucrative item as the transportation of coal. It thus appears 



