HYDROLOGY OF NEW YORK 



837 



A small amount of power has also been sold at different times 

 at Rochester, but since the power at this place is nearly all held 

 by manufacturers who use it at first hand, nothing like a uniform 

 price has been made at Rochester. Generally, power rented has 

 been in small quantities and in connection with floor space, the 

 rental price being really for floor space with small power fur- 

 nished. Reckoning on this basis, small powers have frequently 

 been rented at Rochester at as high a price as flOO per horse- 

 power per year, this being for powder on the shaft, all expenses 

 of maintaining wheels, transmission shafts, etc., being borne by 

 the owner. 



The electric companies at Rochester furnish electric power in 

 small blocks at 3 cents per electric horsepower per hour, which, 

 on the basis of ten hours a day and three hundred and ten days 

 a year, becomes $93 per electric horsepower per annum. 



FUTURE USE OF AVATER POWER IM NEW YORK 



In the foregoing pages we have seen that the Erie canal was a 

 development from the necessities of commerce, not only for the 

 State of New York, but, as a means of connecting the Atlantic 

 ocean with the waters of the Great Lakes, for accelerating the 

 industrial development of the northwestern States. However, 

 in the nineteenth century events move rapidly, and Avhat was true 

 of the Erie canal thirty to fifty years ago is not necessarily true 

 today. Railway systems have now developed to such complete- 

 ness as to compete successfully with water transportation by a 

 channel of the size of the Erie canal. 



During the period covered by the rise and decline of the Erie 

 canal as the important factor in through transportation between 

 the east and a large portion of the west the economic conditions 

 of the interior portion of Xew York have entirely changed. Cheap 

 transportation, by way of the Erie canal and the Great Lakes, 

 has led to a phenomenal development of agriculture on the broad 

 plains of Minnesota and the Dakotas, where, by the use of mod- 

 ern agricultural machinery, grain can be raised at a profit at such 

 prices as to drive the Xew York grain grower from the market. 

 The cheap transportation afforded by the Erie canal has, there- 

 fore, to a considerable degree, led to the passing of supremacy 



