ELECTRICITY SUPPLANTING STEAM.
As electric power has heretofore been produced, for the most part, by the consumption of coal and evaporation of steam, it has had to compete with steam on disadvantageous terms, as the steam lay one step nearer the base of the power, namely, the fuel.
Coal produced steam; steam, in turn, produced electricity; and as success in any line of manufacture consists largely in the application of economical methods, steam power has been preferred to electric power because it has been cheaper, except, probably, in running small plants with electricity supplied from a central station. In Rochester, N. Y., this is done to a very considerable extent, the idea being that electricity produced by steam can be furnished from a central station to many small factories as cheaply or almost as cheaply as steam power could be produced on a small scale in each one of the factories. The centralization of the power economizes both in machinery and labor. In larger plants, however, it has been found impossible to produce electricity from steam power to compete with steam. Waste in the process, steam being the parent force, prevents a pound of coal from producing as much electric power as steam power. To accomplish such a thing would be like turning base metal into gold.
But with electric power produced by the water power of the Niagara Falls tunnel, steam is dethroned as the King of Force. Electricity takes its place and builds an empire on the banks of the Niagara. And the heart of that empire is Buffalo, and will be forever. The wonderful power has its source near to us; only a few miles of copper wire brings it to our workshops; and here are concentrated shipping facilities unequaled upon the continent. Economy in collecting the raw material, and distributing it again in the shape of manufactured articles, is as important as economy in manufacturing. With cheap power from the Niagara we have the two great economies joined. What a tremendous aggregation of advantages! No wonder conservative business men prophesy a million population for Buffalo within ten years. No wonder the New York Tribune says that our “manifest destiny is evidently to be something tremendous.”