230 THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARA. 



wheels and thus take off all the power wanted. Not much less expen- 

 sive was the plan to have a big tube from New York to Chicago, with 

 Niagara Falls at the center, and with the Niagara turbines hitched to a 

 monster air compressor, which should compress air under 250 pounds 

 pressure to the square inch in the tube. 



So far as actual electrical long-distance transmission from Niagara is 

 concerned, it can only be said to be in the embryonic stage, for the sole 

 reason that for nearly a year past the power company has been unable 

 to get into Buffalo, and that not until last year was it able to arrive at 

 acceptable conditions, satisfactory alike to itself and to the city. Work 

 is now being pushed, and by June, 1897, power from the falls will, by 

 contract with the city, be in regular delivery to the local consumption 

 circuits at Buffalo, 22 miles away. But the question arises, and has 

 been fiercely discussed, whether it will pay to send the current beyond 

 Buffalo. Eecent official investigations have shown that steam power 

 in large bulk, under the most favorable conditions, costs to-day in Buf- 

 falo £10 per year per horsepower and upward. Evidently Niagara 

 power, starting at £2 on the turbine shaft or say less than £4 on the 

 line, has a good margin for. effective competition with steam in Buffalo. 



As to the far-away places, the well-known engineers Prof. E. J. 

 Houston and Mr. A. E. Kennelly have made a most careful estimate of 

 the distance to which the energy of Niagara could be economically 

 transmitted by electricity. Taking established conditions and prices 

 that are asked to-day for apparatus, they have shown, to their own sat- 

 isfaction at least, that even in Albany or anywhere else in the same 

 radius 330 miles from the falls, the converted energy of the great cata- 

 ract could be delivered cheaper than good steam engines on the spot 

 could make steam j>ower with coal at the normal price there of 12s. 

 per ton. 



What this enterprise at Niagara aims to do is not to monopolize the 

 power but to distribute it, and it makes Niagara, more than it ever was 

 before, common property. After all is said and done, very few people 

 ever see the falls, and then only for a chance holiday once in a lifetime; 

 but now the useful energy of the cataract is made cheaply and imme- 

 diately available every day in the year to hundreds and thousands, 

 even millions of people, in an endless variety of ways. 



We must not omit from our survey the Erie Canal, in the revival and 

 greater utilization of which as an important highway of commerce 

 Niagara power is expected to play no mean part. In competition with 

 the steam railway, canals have suffered greatly the last fifty years. 

 In the United States, out of 4,468 miles of canal built at a cost of 

 £40,000,000, about one-half has been abandoned and not much of the 

 rest pays expenses. Yet canals have enormous carrying capacity, and 

 a single boat will hold as much as twenty freight cars. The New York 

 State authorities have agreed to conditions by which Niagara energy 

 can be used to propel the canal boats at the rate of £4 per horsepower 



