8 Second Annual Report of the 



public as to the facts and issues involved. As to the principal 

 ends that should be achieved there is practical unanimity of 

 opinion among those having in view the best interests of the 

 State. As to the methods to be pursued to reach those ends, there 

 is a wide diversity of opinion. As to the foundation facts, they 

 are well covered in a general way by the following excerpt from 

 the Report of the Joint Committee of the Legislature on the Con- 

 servation of Water (p. 9) : 



" The transmutation of water power into electrical power 

 widens at a single stroke the area of its possible utilization. 

 As a result of this possible transmutation the beneficial 

 effects of falling water are confined no longer to the ribbons 

 of territory running alongside the streams. 



" Developments in the transmutation of electrical current 

 have vastly enlarged the theatre of its power. No longer is 

 the riparian owner the only possible user of the energy of 

 the stream. Within a radius of a hundred miles of the chan- 

 neled tide any manufacturer, any municipality, any person 

 or corporation whose business depends upon the use of power, 

 may be a beneficiary of its translated energy. The force 

 of Niagara Falls is being transmitted to and being utilized 

 in Syracuse, one hundred and fifty miles away. 



The Concern or the State. 



" This sudden and vast diffusion of power changes at once 

 the light in which it must be considered. It has ceased to be 

 local as to situation or private as to persons using it. It 

 becomes state wide and public in its nature, rising in im- 

 portance from a mere commercial to a pressing and important 

 governmental question. Hydro-electric energy is the factor 

 that has effected this change, that has made the development 

 of water power a state wide issue. It affects now not merely 

 a fraction of our population but our whole population. At 

 the same time that these political considerations project it 

 into the sphere of State control, the physical proportions of 

 the problem assume dimensions of such magnitude and nature 

 that nothing less than the State can adequately deal with 

 it. Individually developed power has reached its limitations. 

 The natural laws of commerce bar further progress under im- 

 pulses purely commercial. Riparian owners along the various 

 streams have invested millions in the development of water 

 power, but this development has now reached the point of 

 maximum commercial practicability. Beyond this point the 

 commercial impulse will not drive. 



