Now it sings an anthem to industry, to science, to inventive genius, to commercial prosperity.
The magic wand of the electrician has been waved, and the mighty voice swells and roars to new music of new and marvelous power.
The new song rising from the mist and the spray of the cataract heralds a new era in Buffalo.
It heralds the evolution of the Queen City of the Lakes into the Electric City of the World; a smokeless, dustless, wholesome city where the myriad and ever-increasing wheels of industry will turn with the silent, unseen power generated from Niagara’s unceasing current; a city that will grow and attract and gather force and wealth and people until it comes to be known as the New Wonder of the World.
When the city of Buffalo, under the favoring conditions which have brought it to its present splendid eminence, doubles its population in ten years, and increases in wealth seven million dollars yearly, what can be foretold of it when in addition to all its present wealth-producing resources it becomes the possessor of an unlimited supply of the cheapest power in the whole world!
Contemplating this fact, the Chicago Tribune said: “By virtue of having the cheapest power for turning its machinery, Buffalo will inevitably become the manufacturing centre of the nation.”
The New York Tribune adds this weighty testimony to the greatness of our future: “The past of Buffalo is secure, and her manifest destiny is evidently to be something tremendous.”
Already preparations are being made to bring to Buffalo the electric power from the great tunnel at Niagara Falls. Several companies have been formed of foremost business men, who see that in the distribution and application of the mighty power to industrial uses there are fortunes to be made, and that the pioneers in the task will win the chief prizes.