598 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



without its way being smoothed by it. 

 We can make light and heat by hydro- 

 electric power, but the great turbines 

 move on bearings that are smothered in 

 petroleum. From it we get the quick- 

 exploding gas which is to the motor and 

 the airship what air is to the human body. 

 To industry, agriculture, commerce, and 

 the pleasures of life petroleum is now 

 essential. Therefore to waste it is a 

 crime. 



An absolute government would pro- 

 hibit a barrel of it being used for fuel 

 before every drop of kerosene, gasoline, 

 and other invaluable constituents have 

 been taken from it. 



How much of it there is in the United 

 States no one knows. The Geological 

 Survey has made a maximum estimate of 

 twenty-three billion barrels, which sounds 

 like an inexhaustible supply ; but at the 

 rate that it is now being consumed in 

 this country alone (265,000,000 barrels a 

 year) this does not mean an indefinite 

 supply, and from the rapid exhaustion of 

 some fields it is manifest that there can 

 be no real approximation of the oil in 

 our lands. Whatever the supply, it should 

 not be allowed in its crude state to com- 

 pete with coal as fuel, and the govern- 

 ment should not promote its being wasted 

 by applying to it archaic laws under 

 which waste is a certainty. 



TURNING WATER INTO POWER 



When Benjamin Franklin caught the 

 lightning on the tail of his kite he did a 

 lot of strange things for this world, of 

 which we are only beginning to learn. 

 Among these are the uses to which flow- 

 ing water may be put. The old-fashioned 

 water-wheel, which was the motive power 

 of our early industries, is now converted 

 into a turbine which generates electricity, 

 and this has as great a variety of uses 

 as the muscles of a man's arm or a 

 horse's shoulder. 



Among the other strange things done 

 by Benjamin Franklin was to give an 

 added and peculiar value to the ledges of 

 granite which confine our western streams 

 and turn them into dam sites, useful for 

 purposes of power generation. How 

 many of these there are on public land 

 not yet disposed of no one knows, but we 



have several hundred under withdrawal, 

 which should be freed from withdrawal 

 and turned into use just as quickly as 

 possible ; for, as the muscle of man or 

 horse can raise a few barrels of water 

 from the well to supply stock or irrigate 

 the garden patch, so can the power of the 

 stream, turned into electricity, be used to 

 raise millions of barrels of water to irri- 

 gate alfalfa farms or orchards. And this 

 is now one of the most common uses of 

 electric power in the West, and, in fact, 

 in some of the eastern States where irri- 

 gation is found of value. 



The waters that flow down our streams 

 are only a small portion of the rain and 

 snow which fall. There are streams that 

 follow their courses underground just as 

 clearly marked and as valuable, if once 

 discovered- as the streams above ground ; 

 and to tap these is a part of making 

 America. Cheap gasoline is doing it in 

 some places ; cheap coal in a very few ; 

 but cheaper electricity is doing it in a 

 large way. 



GETTING SUPPLIES OP NITROGEN 



Then, too, there is that mystifying 

 miracle of drawing nitrogen from the air 

 for chemical use, which can be done only 

 with great power, but is being done in 

 Germany, Norway, Sweden, France, 

 Switzerland, and elsewhere, by which an 

 inexhaustible substitute for the almost 

 exhausted nitrates of Chile has been 

 found. This is already a great industry 

 in Europe, and will by necessity become 

 greater in the United States than else- 

 where, because of our size and need and 

 opportunity. 



To increase the yield of our farms and 

 to give us an independent and adequate 

 supply of nitrogen for the explosives used 

 in war, we must set water-wheels at work 

 that will fix nitrogen in lime. And there 

 are still more intimate uses for this 

 power. In places in Montana it is so 

 cheap that it operates the churn, the sew- 

 ing-machine, and the vacuum cleaner, and 

 supplies light to the house and fuel to 

 the kitchen range. Indeed, for the possi- 

 ble uses of electricity there is no measure. 



Accompanying the general develop- 

 ment bill in its passage through the 

 House was a measure intended to pro- 



