It is estimated that the electric power from the Falls can be sold in Buffalo, ready for instant use by touching a button, at little more than half the present cost of steam power. Here is room for thought and comparison on the part of those engaged in manufacturing enterprises.
Does not cheap power settle the question of a city’s manufacturing greatness? Can there be any appeal from such settlement?
Give any city advantages in the way of cheap and abundant power not enjoyed by any other city on the face of the earth and what is the natural result? The eyes of manufacturers everywhere are focused upon that city.
Give to a city unequaled transportation facilities and the cheapest power in the world, and you have the conditions for building up the greatest industrial center in the world.
This is Buffalo’s position.
Far-sighted men do not talk any more about the possibilities of Buffalo’s future. They talk about certainties. They say with the New York Tribune: “The past of Buffalo is secure, and her manifest destiny is evidently to be something tremendous.”
Truly, as has been said by Samuel Wilkeson, Buffalo holds the key to the commerce of an inland empire.
THE GROWTH OF A YEAR.
The Buffalo City Directory for 1892 shows about 6,000 more names than were contained in last year’s directory. In order to compute the population of a city, it is usual to multiply the number of names in the directory by 3½, as, for the most part, only the names of heads of families appear there. Some cities multiply by 4. It is certainly very modest to make the multiplier 3¼, which is usually done in Buffalo. Upon this basis it will be seen that the increase in our population during the past year was 19,500, enough people gained in twelve months to make a city as large as Lockport, N. Y., and nearly as large as Oswego, N. Y. Counting 3¼ people to one name in the directory, we have a population, in June, 1892, of 297,375.
The increase during the year has been no more than the usual steady increase in the population of the city. With the addition of cheap electric power as a cause for growth, there can be no question but that the increase in future years will be much more rapid than in the past.