The basic principle of “Hydro” is a partnership of municipalities to obtain power at cost. The Commission makes all the expenditures necessary to develop power and deliver it to the cities. It determines the rates at which the cities may re-sell the power to local consumers. Each year the probable cost of power is estimated for each city, with allowances for interest, depreciation, reserves, and contingencies. This fixes the rates for the next twelve months. At the end of the year, the actual cost is calculated. If the expense has been more than the rates previously fixed, the cities are called upon to make up the difference; if the cost has been less, the partners get rebates on the year’s bills.
When I looked for the directing mind behind all this amazing development, I quickly found it. It is in the person of Sir Adam Beck, formerly a box manufacturer of London, Ontario, and the only chairman the Commission has ever had. He is one of the most popular figures in all Ontario, and it is largely to the organizing genius and driving power of his personality that the success of “Hydro” is due. He sits in Parliament, where he keeps on the alert for the welfare of the Commission’s work, and manages in person its relations with the provincial government.
The Niagara Peninsula, along the north shore of Lake Erie, is one of the finest fruit-growing districts in the world. Among other advantages the farmers here have cheap power from the Ontario “Hydro”.
The big ditch that feeds the giant power station was cut through solid rock for miles and carries a stream of water thirty-nine feet deep and fifty feet wide, or more than the flow of a river.
A bucket of water dropped down this cliff to the Niagara River would strike with the force of thirty horse-power. Imagine 20,000 buckets dropped every second and you have the capacity of this 600,000 horse-power station.
The cold facts about “Hydro” make it easy for Sir Adam to demonstrate its achievements. In his home town of London, for example, where formerly the monthly consumption of electricity averaged less than twenty kilowatt hours for each household, seventy-five kilowatt hours are now used. To an extent formerly undreamed of, power has been put into the homes of the people, and they are using electric appliances in far greater number than persons of similar circumstances in the United States. Electric cooking stoves are being installed in southern Ontario at the rate of one thousand a month. Workingmen’s wives have toasters, electric washers, electric fans, electric heaters, curling irons, and everything else the appliance companies can devise.
The Commission is especially proud of the way it has taken electricity out to the farms. Private companies usually find rural extensions too expensive, on account of the long distances between installations, and the relatively small volume of current used. The Commission has now enough rural lines to reach from New York to Atlanta, and it serves as many country homes as there are people living on farms in Rhode Island. Although the rates are higher than in the cities, I find that a farmer can light his house and barns, run an electric stove and household appliances, and a three-horse-power motor besides, for from six to eight dollars a month. The farmers of Ontario can afford to use electricity to run their pumps, separators, churns, milking machines, saw-mills, choppers, and threshers—not because they are richer than other farmers, but because of low-cost power.