The New Wonder of the World: Buffalo, the Electric City

by A. E. Richmond

“THE MANUFACTURING CENTRE OF THE NATION.”

Within the past year or two, and particularly during 1892, Buffalo has received a great deal of attention from the press in all parts of the country. The leading newspapers of the large cities have discussed the question of Buffalo’s future growth, and the general concensus of opinion has been that it will be phenomenally large.

Among the newspapers that have entered into this discussion is the Chicago Tribune. It stands in the front rank of the great journals of the United States. It is very ably edited, is a sterling, conservative newspaper, and its editorial utterances carry great weight. In its issue of March 13, 1892, it printed a leading editorial about Buffalo, and it is here produced in full:

“A recent article in the Tribune setting forth the prospect that this city will ere long be the centre of operations in the United States for the largest electrical company in the world has incited more than one good-humored protest that the people here are expecting too much. The New York Tribune and the Buffalo Express both call attention to the fact that Buffalo has great expectations in this matter of being the electrical centre of the world. With Niagara Falls behind it, and a consequence of the fact, Buffalo is claimed to be looming up as the chief manufacturing and shipping centre of the interior.

“In the course of a few months from now the practicability of converting the Falls into a source of power, light, heat, and refrigeration is to be demonstrated. A company is now constructing tunnels and setting a series of turbine wheels in position from which it is expected to obtain 120,000 horse-power without the combustion of a single pound of fuel. If it succeeds in this, every wheel in Buffalo can be turned and every building lighted and heated at the lowest possible cost. With this enormous electrical power transmitted to the city and distributed through it coal will no longer be burned there, and the steam engine will be dispensed with in manufacturing processes. By virtue of having the cheapest power for turning its machinery Buffalo will inevitably become the manufacturing centre of the nation. This is the forecast made by practical electricians and endorsed by shrewd business men as a sound deduction, warranted, too, by a glance at the remarkable progress achieved by the city during the last decade.

“In that period the city at the foot of Lake Erie increased its coal traffic 387 per cent., its iron receipts 226 per cent., its population by 89 per cent., and fully doubled its grain receipts and lumber shipments. It is already the largest grain-receiving and coal-distributing center in the world, the principal lumber port in the country, and one of the greatest markets for live stock and fish. Its number of manufacturing establishments increased 200 per cent. from 1880 to 1890, and it is now considered certain that they will more than treble again by the end of the century with the conversion of the Falls into a source of electrical power, while the population will increase from 300,000 to 1,000,000. And it is said ‘Buffalo now seems destined to gain steadily upon Chicago in the race for commercial supremacy.’

BUFFALO AND ITS ELECTRIC POWER HOUSE.

“That is a noble ambition, and the Tribune sees no reason to find fault with it. But it should not be forgotten that Chicago will also grow, so that Buffalo may still be a long way behind when her promise of a million inhabitants will have been realized. Yet it may be said that the prospects of growth are set forth only in a mild way by either of the papers named. If the transference of electrical power be performed as cheaply and efficiently as is now expected the result may be a speedy removal thither of much of the manufacturing industry of New England, a large share of the ‘Yankee notion’ business that now flourishes in those Eastern States, and no little of the manufacturing energy that at present exhibits itself in the smaller cities of New York and New Jersey. Possibly the silk industry of the latter will be found seeking the propinquity of the Falls. Troy and Rochester, particularly the latter, are likely to be injuriously affected, unless it be found that the power can be transmitted to them with but little loss, and Cleveland may be a great loser, while even the woolen mills of Philadelphia may be unable to compete with those of the new center. In short, the possibilities for paper mills, flour mills, cotton and woolen manufactories, and a host of other hives of industry clustering there is limited only by the quantity of power available from the descending waters, and this great prosperity will not bring with it the smudge of coal-burning, which has defiled the buildings and polluted the atmosphere of other cities that have attempted greatness by changing to more useful forms the raw products of nature. But it is hard to see how any or all of this can materially hurt Chicago, and the people of this city can well afford to wish those of Buffalo success in their new departure.”