On Central-Station Power Supply. 473 
present, much too favourably situated competitors, the 
mill-owners. That this was the real want was emphasized 
by reference to the enormous advance recently made in the 
amount of machinery used by man, and to the certain con- 
tinuance of this increase in the future. 
Difficult problems must arise for solution in connection 
with the adoption of such schemes. The probability of 
their successful survival in the face of the changed relations 
between capital and labour, the altered conditions of demand 
and supply, and the effects of their action upon the national 
industries and international trade must be investigated. In 
short, their entire political and economic significance must, 
no doubt, be well considered in all generality before their 
establishment on a large scale as working systems can be 
acquiesced in. 
With such an inexact science as political economy, how- 
ever, a good experiment is worth more than an excogita- 
tion and demonstration of results which may never happen, 
owing to the uncertain action of human free will. 
It was hence finally concluded that the whole matter of 
alleviation of the condition of the working classes lay 
largely in the hands of the engineering profession, on whom 
rests the onus of cheapening the supply of power by tech- 
nical advances to be made by them in the transmission and 
distribution in large manufacturing centres. Not until this 
has been done will it be possible to make trial with any 
hope of commercial success of the latter system of indus- 
trial organization here proposed. 
It would be useless to encourage artizans to become their 
own employers so long as the cost to them of their most 
vital need, machine-power, remains five or six times what 
the capitalist has to pay. 
This paper is accordingly devoted to a brief account of 
the present conditions and the possibilities of success of one 
of the three systems of power supply most commonly used. 
Of these three, electric, hydraulic and pneumatic, the 
last-named has been chosen for first discussion. 
In a scheme for the transmission and distribution of 
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