24 
BULLETIN 102, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
which is not the case , 1 it will be seen that the nondevelopment of 
three-quarters of the potential water power of the country remains to 
be accounted for on another basis. In other words, the quality of 
Federal legislation, even under sweeping concessions to its untoward 
effect, provides but a minor element in the complete explanation . 2 
The specific obstructions to the unfoldment of water power will 
be looked at later, but back of these instrumentalities is a funda- 
mental economic setting which is essential to the view. The main 
features of this background are two in number. One is concerned 
with a relation between the power resources ; the other, with the force 
of convention in respect to power usage. 
In the first place, coal and oil have been so bountiful in this coun- 
try that only the richest portions of these resources are worked; a 
Fig. 1. — The distribution of the water-power resources of the United States. 
project contemplating the development of a water-power site faces 
this situation . 3 It is evident that the cream of the water-power re- 
1 The water-power rights subject to Federal jurisdiction are largely located in regions 
of the West remote from industrial centers where they are not currently wanted anyway. 
2 Of course, the whole default may be attributed to the Government’s lack of action , 
but the total effect of ill-advised legislation, while significant, has been exaggerated. 
3 The fuel resources of the United States have been mined on such an extravagantly 
uneconomical basis of opportunism that for the time being a superabundance of coal 
and oil has been maintained on the market. It may sound as if one were making light of 
the facts to speak of there being an overproduction of coal and oil at a time when 
everyone is meeting on every hand a shortage of these basic materials. Yet it is well 
within conservative figures to assert, even without reference to water-power potentialities, 
that this country has long produced more than double the amount of coal and oil really 
needed under proper arrangements ; and, of necessity, the surplus has had to be consumed 
in the form of waste. Overproduction leads to waste ; waste leads to overproduction ; 
and so the circle goes on unbroken. With no pressing necessity for introducing economies 
in the use of coal and oil, there was still less of urgency to call the more basic economy 
of water power into play. 
