POWEE. 133 



for which the railways provide a pattern;^ the realm of power pro- 

 duction offers great leeway for the upgrowth of coordinated, but 

 separately constituted activities, thus stimulating initiative and en- 

 couraging business enterprise far beyond their present attainments 

 in this field. In this connection, it is worthy of emphasis that such 

 restrictions as may be inherently necessary in correlating the whole 

 fringe of attendant activities with the central enterprise will be 

 overwhelmingly offset by the tremendous opportunities created by 

 the unfoldment. 



This type of development will place water power and coal on an 

 equal footing. In regions where only one is present, that, of course, 

 will alone produce. But in regions where both are on hand, the one 

 rendering the cheaper service will come into play through a process 

 of natural, unhampered selection. Thus the common carrier will 

 coordinate the two resources, so long estranged, and lead to their com- 

 plementary and balanced development. Adequate transportation has 

 alwaj^s been necessary to the development of resources; it is a trite 

 commonplace that no region, however rich, can become of consequence 

 until served by proper carriage. This is no less true with energy. 

 Given suitable transportation, our energy supply is assured.- 



The final status of a common-carrier system for the transmission 

 of energy can not be determined at this moment. The entire prob- 

 lem of transportation is in course of flux, and the special issue of 

 power must be cast into the cauldron in which the railway matter is 

 boiling. As the railways emerge, so should power. But with no in- 

 clination toward voicing a decision in the matter, it may be antici- 

 pated that a special transportation service for power, to fulfill its 

 proper function, will have to be either (1) an integrated activity, 

 privately financed, but under public oversight on the basis of a 

 common carrier, and comparable to a railway company; or (2) if 

 still closer Federal oversight be desirable, a close corporation, in 

 which the Government holds the stock, bearing some analogy to the 



1 Owing to the relative shortness of transmission radius (up to ahout 200 miles under 

 present practice), conditions might arise in certain localities in which the authority 

 vested in the Federal Government under the head of interstate commerce might prove 

 more restricted than in the case of the railways. These and similar difficulties ■will no 

 doubt arise, and objections to the v. hole conception may be raised on this score, hut 

 technical niceties and equivocations are being cast aside right and left in response to 

 the claims of progress, and in this respect nothing of an unsurmountable nature can 

 be discerned ahead. 



2 Taking a broad view ahead, we are confronted with the fact that the whole forward 

 sweep of electrical development is dependent upon a supply of copper, or some such metal 

 of ready conductivity. The copper supply of the world has come under close observation 

 during the course of the war and there has resulted no special confidence in the bounti- 

 fulness of supply for the future. As is well known, copper mining has already 

 been reduced to the expedient of working a lean type of disseminated deposit by large- 

 scale methods of operation, and a large part of the world's output is so derived. In 

 view of the importance of the property of conductivity, the whole future of transportation 

 would seem here to enmesh with mineral resource efficiency in respect to copper and 

 with electrochemical advance in respect to developing supplies of other conductors. 



79968°— 19— Bull. 102, vol. 1 10 



