at all could afford the essential conveniences, and with labor as it is now, it looks as though power of some kind would soon become an economic necessity. Then, we may see lots of improvements. There’s enough water-power going to waste in this country to supply every farm with electricity, but I guess we farmers will always have to fight the sin of conservatism.”
Marjorie settled back in her corner of the seat. She was ready to drop the subject for something more interesting.
“And yet,” she said, laughing at him through half closed eyes, “you want to be a farmer. Your poor wife!”
Billy looked hard at the road ahead. “It wouldn’t be a very alluring prospect, would it?” he agreed.
For several nights after this the light burned late in the Agricultural Office, and curious sentinels of neighborhood affairs speculated on reasons for the strange behaviour of “the agricultural fellow” during the day. On several occasions he had been seen patrolling the creeks which wound like threads of a spider’s web through the hollows of the rolling land. He always carried an armful of boards and a saw and appeared to be measuring the width of the streams.
“Mebby surveyin’ for an irrigatin’ system,” one of the village store roosters suggested.
When Billy had satisfied himself as to the resources at hand, and his search for technical data had about exhausted the patience of the engineers within reach, he succeeded in getting some twenty farmers to meet in the agricultural office one evening to discuss harnessing and putting to work the water-power in the district. He pointed out how the sight of a dozen young horses running wild in his pastures would impress the average farmer as an awful example of horse-power going to waste, how he would spend a good deal of time and effort and money if necessary to capture a horse-power or two for his own use; while there may be five, ten or twenty horse-power running to waste in the brook that waters his meadows, but he is not inspired with any desire to possess and harness that.
He explained his strange conduct of the past two weeks when he had followed the streams of the district for miles, measuring their flow with a weir, and he gave the results of his prospecting. He told them that every four thousand gallons of water falling one foot in one minute, or every four hundred gallons falling ten feet in one minute meant the power of one horse going to waste; that one water horse-power would furnish light for the average farm; that five water horse-power would furnish light and power for both the barn and the house. He estimated that the cost of installing a five water horse-power would
not exceed the cost of one young horse, and that it would have paid for itself in saving wages, by the time the horse was ready to die.
He didn’t expect the men to be carried away by his enthusiasm, and they weren’t. A power system of any kind was a novelty in the section. An itinerant gasoline engine made its rounds every winter to cut the year’s wood, but no one had ventured to adapt even gasoline to any farm work. Naturally, they were skeptical of the energy stored up in their quiet little creeks. Billy knew that the only hope of converting them rested in demonstrating just what a power system could be made to do, and beyond the pine woods, neighboring with the farm he had hoped to own, was a place where a stream from the hills ran everything that had formerly turned with a crank. He could arrange an excursion to the place. He could have the engineer who had gone over the ground here come out and explain just how the same principle could be carried out at home. He could get manufacturers to bring special pieces of equipment and demonstrate their uses. And in order that the scheme might not miss its main objective—to show Miss Evison that a farm home could be made a livable place—he would arrange with the owner and his wife to let him put on a demonstration of a complete home equipment. In the last undertaking his zeal was considerably in excess of his ability