20 UTILIZATION OF WATER POWER AT NIAGARA FALLS. 



think not; I believe that as scientific men and women we may look 

 forward with all confidence to a marvelous growth in our city. 

 That water power generating electricity is to be the power of the 

 20th century needs but little argument. Wood as a source of heat 

 .and power need not be considered and it needs no prophet to fore- 

 see the time when the coal mines of the U. S. will be exhausted. 

 Long before that time the price of coal will be so high as to pro- 

 hibit its use for the generation of large blocks of power. You are 

 all aware of the marked increase in the normal, (not strike), prices 

 of soft coal in the last ten years. The exhaustion of the natural 

 gas fields is so rapid that gas is not a factor in the problem. Look 

 which way we may the inevitable conclusion is that recourse by 

 the great factories must be had to the water powers of the country. 

 Of all the hydraulic developments that the 20th century will wit- 

 ness, which is best situated, w T hich is on the grandest scale, which 

 is most unfailing ? Without question that at Niagara Falls. With 

 a reservoir capacity in the Great Lakes of 90,000 square miles, 

 (twice the area of the Empire State), uneffected by the droughts 

 of summer or the freshets of winter, Niagara will stand through 

 the centuries as the emblem of mighty, unfailing, never ceasing 

 power. With this mighty giant delivering the fruits of his labors 

 at her very doors, with unsurpassed railroad facilities, with the 

 iron of Messaba, the copper of Michigan, the grain of Dakota 

 transported by water to her wharves, what city in the world can 

 offer to manufacturing interests such inducements to locate within 

 her boundaries? Buffalo's future greatness rests on no vain pro- 

 duct of the imagination but on solid, scientific facts which cannot 

 be belittled or gainsaid, and only the fleeting passage of time brief 

 as the days of a man is needed to make Buffalo the great manu- 

 facturing center of the land. The crowning success of her muni- 

 cipal life may not be reached until you and 1 have ceased the more 

 strenuous labors of life and sit with folded hands in the chimney 

 corner of old age, when the whir of the mighty wheels of her fac- 

 tories falls on our dulled ears, when the vista of Niagara's far 

 reaching activities is seen through our dimmed eyes, but come 

 when it will we will go to the source of all power more content 

 because we have done our little part in developing one of the won- 

 ders of the 20th century and adding untold wealth and happiness 

 to the city of our choice. The fable of the rainbow has come true 

 and the shimmering bow that ever spans Niagara's gorge holds at 

 either end the hoarded wealth of the ages which will be poured 

 into the lap of the Queen City of the nation. 



(The End.) 



