“BUFFALO’S GOLD MINE.”
Some years ago, Mr. James B. Stafford, of this city, then president of the Buffalo Business Men’s Association, conceived the idea of offering a prize of $100,000 for the best plan of utilizing the current of Niagara River. He and over one hundred others subscribed $1,000 each to a fund for the purpose, and the attention of scientific men in all parts of the civilized world was directed to the problem. This problem has been solved in the development of the tunnel project.
Mr. Stafford is a keen, shrewd, level-headed business man, and has made a large fortune by judicious investments in Buffalo real estate. He believes that Buffalo will have a million population within ten years, as a result of an industrial revolution in this city that will amaze the world, the chief and controlling reason for which will be the introduction of cheap electric power.
THE BUFFALO LIBRARY.
In the Buffalo Commercial of December 22, 1891, the following interview with Mr. Stafford was printed, under the heading “Buffalo’s Gold Mine:”
“If the richest gold mine in the whole world were discovered in a suburb of Buffalo, what effect do you suppose it would have on our people?” asked Mr. James B. Stafford of a Commercial reporter.
“There would be tremendous excitement, of course,” was the reply.
“There would,” returned Mr. Stafford; “but do you know that the richest gold mine in the world would be a mere bagatelle compared with the wealth that will spring from the Niagara Falls tunnel? Do our people stop to think what it means? It means prosperity for Buffalo beyond the wildest present expectation. I believe I speak entirely within bounds when I say that it will make Buffalo the second greatest city in the whole United States, and that you and I won’t be very old when our city reaches that place. Looking into the immediate future, I will prophesy that we will have a million population within ten years.
“Just look about you and see what electricity has already done for the world, and yet we are scarcely entered up in the Electric Age. We are at the dawn of a new era, and electricity, now in its infancy, will grow and develop until it revolutionizes the world. It will give us power, light, heat, refrigeration. It will do everything for us that steam now does, and here in Buffalo it is going to cost less than water power.”
“What does it cost manufacturers for power now?”
“The water power of the country now in use costs from $16.67 per horse-power per year at Lockport to $56.25 at Manayunk, Pa., while steam costs all the way from $35 to $175 per horse-power per annum.
“When we consider that the entire power going to waste at the Falls is one-seventh of the entire power of the world one can comprehend what an inexhaustible mine of wealth we are on the eve of developing. Already the problem of transmitting electricity long distances without much waste has been solved. Other companies are in the field, and before many years instead of 125,000 horse-power there will probably be a million. Buffalo being the nearest large city to the great cataract, it will be the first to receive the benefits.
“Just let your mind run forward a dozen years. Electricity running through cables from the Falls will act on our city like the warm blood running through a human body, will permeate every part of the city, running 2,000 horse-power engines as easily as the dentist’s drill or the family sewing machine. Every wheel in Buffalo will be eventually turned by electricity. It will light and heat our houses. It will be cheaper than anything else. The impetus that it will give our manufacturing enterprises will be incalculable.
“Add to all this our great natural advantages and no wonder our expectations should be great. We are midway between the great producing regions of the West and the more thickly populated sections of the East, with its continually increasing export trade. What better point could be found for the manufacturing centre of the country? Here all the shipping from the western chain of lakes discharges its cargoes of grain, lumber, ore, etc., reloading with up-cargoes of coal (and all the great coal-carrying transportation corporations have branches that now terminate in this city), laying at the door of the manufacturer the raw material at the lowest possible freight rate, with twenty-six lines of railroads leading from here in every direction (many of them trunk lines), with a canal and waterway to the seaboard giving the manufacturer the finest shipping facilities possible.
“Buffalo already boasts of the largest coal distributing point in the world, the largest sheep and fresh fish market in the world; one of the largest horse markets; the largest grain distributing point in the world; the second largest cattle market in the world; we are destined to be the largest flour milling city in the world, and with our suburban port of Tonawanda we have the largest lumber market in the world.
“In the last ten years we have increased our population 89 per cent., and with this new and wonderful factor that no other city in the world’s history has ever had, it is not a wild statement to make, but one that the present outlook would warrant, that Buffalo and not Chicago will be the second American city.”