power: its significance and needs. 
47 
raw materials of the commonest and cheapest kinds, such as sand, 
lime, coke, and others. Further products, too numerous to specify, 
are being commercially launched or are in the experimental stage in 
the works and laboratories of that electrochemical center. An im- 
portant industry has also developed in the electrolytic manufacture 
of sodium and chlorine, and their numerous compounds, used in 
large quantities in a wide variety of other industries, which are 
made from common salt — a widespread and cheap material. It 
would appear that one striking characteristic of electrochemistry 
is its ability to convert into useful products the commonest and 
cheapest of everyday materials. It holds forth in this sense the 
prospect of the highest type of constructive economic service. 
On the whole, then, electrochemical industries and applications 
have developed in the United States to some extent in spite of high 
electric-power rates, but the lines of development have been those 
in which the advantages to be gained were conspicuous and the opera- 
tions have been largely confined to Niagara Falls. In the vaster 
range of possibilities, in which the opportunities were not so out- 
standing, high rates and lack of available power have been suffi- 
cient to head off an incalulable range of prospective enterprises, to 
the country’s serious economic loss. Indeed, if electric power were 
made available in quantity at rates half the prevailing tariff, the 
upgrowth of electrochemical industries would overwhelm the previous 
attainments along this line . 1 
The whole field of electrochemical development in the United 
States is dependent in the last analysis upon the quantity and price 
of electric power. And in both respects the power situation as it 
now stands is inadequate. Unless we are prepared to see the electro- 
chemical industries which we now have emigrate in part to foreign 
countries, and unless we are also willing to face a stagnant condition 
in respect to a wide range of important industrial developments, 
the whole matter of our power supply must come up for attention. 
This matter does not concern one section or one class; the field is 
country wide; the outcome concerns both industry and the public 
interest. And labor in particular will find a concern in this affair, 
for only by cheapened mechanical power can a generous rate of 
human compensation be sustained in the face of cheaper labor, both 
human and mechanical, on the European market. 
SUMMARY. 
Modern society is dependent upon industrialism, the material 
framework of civilization. 
1 There is a great stir in the South at present over the prospects of a great electro- 
chemical industry growing up within the reaches of the Government nitrate plants at 
Muscle Shoals, Ala. The price of power will, of course, be the critical factor condition- 
ing the outcome. 
