power: its significance and needs. 
43 
much larger portion of the country may be served with power on 
terms of equality than is now the case. Thus can power be turned 
away, in considerable measure, from its present dangerous facility in 
accentuating diversity of economic interest and made to contribute to 
the nationalization of industrial opportunity. 
But just as coal contains valuable commodities as well as stored- 
up energy, so electricity is not merely a convenient form of power, 
but is a new and profoundly important chemical agent as well. In 
this sense electricity represents a fresh industrial factor which is just 
beginning to come into play and bids fair to make for itself a master 
range of activity. Electricity, then, is not only capable of distribut- 
ing industrial opportunity; it is competent at the same time of in- 
finitely enlarging the scope of industrialism. The opportunity in 
this direction is so significant and has so recently become apparent 
that the field merits a close view in connection with the whole matter 
of power supply. 
This field of special electrical service, in contradistinction to the 
application of electric energy as a motive force, is covered by the term 
“ electrochemistry,” which is the art of applying electrical energy to 
the furtherance of chemical operations. The aptness of electricity 
for this purpose has proved so great that in scarcely more than a 
decade there has developed a large number of electrochemical indus- 
tries, in addition to a growing range of superior adaptions in estab- 
lished industries and in the realm of metallurgy, with the setting up 
of a new branch of the latter known as electrometallurgy. Thus 
electrochemistry has not only facilitated ordinary industrial activi- 
ties in many directions ; it has opened an unbounded territory never 
before traversed by industry. 
The facility of electricity in this new realm is due to its capacity 
for generating heat under conditions open to exact control, over 
high temperatures not attainable by fuel combustion, and in absence 
of gases, together with the exertion of a chemical force of decompo- 
sition independently or in conjunction with the heating effect. Thus 
electrochemistry operates through its dissociating effect upon solu- 
tions and melts, a process technically called “ electrolysis ” ; through 
discharges in gases ; and by means of electric furnaces. Upon these 
operations depend the manufacture of alkalis, chlorine, atmospheric 
nitrogen, graphite, artificial abrasives, and calcium carbide ; the pro- 
duction of aluminum and many of the steel-hardening metals ; and the 
refining of gold, silver, and copper — to mention merely the most con- 
spicuous attainments of the electrochemical art. 
The achievements of electrochemistry to date are to be credited 
mainly to the region around Niagara Falls and to foreign countries, 
especially the latter. Elsewhere in the United States there are rela- 
tively few electrochemical activities. Such as have been established are 
