This would be a plan for the wedding of the stream and the mine, the white coal with the black. "White coal" they call it in imaginative France, this tumbling water which is converted into so many forms; and a much cleaner, handier kind of coal it is than its black brother. And cheaper, for the water goes on to return again and fall once more and forever into the pockets of the turbine which whirls the dynamo and so gathers or releases that mystery which we name but never define. Farsighted, purposeful Germany fought four and a half years upon the strength of great power plants run by the snows of the Alps. She did not rely on these alone for power, nor were they her main reliance, but they gave her a lasting power which otherwise she would not have had. And we may expect her to improve on that war-time experience for the conduct of the hard fight she is to make in the industrial field. France saved enough territory from the invader to permit her to make new adventures into this field and so to some degree offset the coal loss of Lens. Italy found that she had still left unused opportunities for hydroelectric development sufficient with the coal she could secure from England and America to see her through the war. And with coal conditions as they are in Europe we may expect a still greater push to make use of water power to turn the industrial wheels of peace. It must be so likewise here.
And it is likely that the long-pending power bill which will make available the dam and reservoir sites on withdrawn public lands and make feasible the financing of many projects on both navigable and unnavigable streams will soon have become law. We shall then have an opportunity that never before has been given us to develop the hydroelectric possibilities of the country. And this raises the question as to their extent.
The theoretical maximum quantity of hydroelectric power that can be produced in the United States has recently been estimated by Dr. Steinmetz, who calculates that if every stream could be fully utilized throughout its length at all seasons, the power obtained would be 230,000,000 kilowatts (320,000,000 horsepower). It is clear that only a fraction of this absolute maximum can ever be made available. The Geological Survey estimates that the water power in this country that is available for ultimate development amounts to 54,000,000 continuous horsepower.
The census of 1912 showed that the country's developed water power was 4,870,000 horsepower, about 9 per cent of the maximum power available for economic development and less than 2 per cent of the total that may be supplied by the streams as estimated by Dr. Steinmetz. According to the census, stationary prime movers representing a capacity of more than 30,000,000 horsepower, furnished by water, steam, and gas, were in operation in the United States in 1912. (This amount does not, of course, include power generated by locomotives, marine engines, automobiles, and similar mobile apparatus.) The average power furnished by these stationary prime movers was probably not more than 20 per cent of their installed capacity, so that the power produced in 1912 was equivalent to probably not more than 6,000,000 continuous horsepower.
As the estimated available water power given above represents continuous power the country evidently possesses much more water power than it now requires, so that there would be an ample surplus for many years if the power were so distributed geographically that it could be economically supplied to the industries that need it. But as a matter of fact the water-power resources of the country are by no means evenly distributed. Over 70 per cent of the available water power is west of the Mississippi, whereas over 70 per cent of the total horsepower now installed in prime movers is east of the river. Therefore unless the East is to lose its industrial supremacy it must press and press hard for the development of all water-power possibilities!
THE AGE OF PETROLEUM.
For a full century now we have been passing through different phases of industrial and commercial life which have been characterized by some form of power. First the age of steam, and then the age of electricity. We have passed out of neither and yet we have come into another age—that of petroleum. As a lubricant, it has become of such universal use that it has been called the barometer of industry, and no doubt after it has ceased to be a popular illuminant or a source of power it will live invaluable as the thing which lets the wheels go round. Its greatest popularity now arises out of its use in the internal-combustion engine, and of the making of these there is no end. It draws railroad trains and drives street cars. It pumps water, lifts heavy loads, has taken the place of millions of horses, and in 20 years has become a farming, industrial, business, and social necessity. The naval and the merchant ships of this country and of England are fitted and being fitted to use it either under steam boilers as fuel or directly in the Diesel engine. The airplane has been made possible by it. It propels that modern juggernaut, the tank. In the air it has no rival, while on land and sea it threatens the supremacy of its rivals whenever it appears. There has been no such magician since the day of Aladdin as this drop of mineral oil. Medicines and dyes and high explosives are distilled from it. No one knows whence it cometh or whither it goeth. Men search for it with the passion of the early Argonauts, and the promise now is that nations will yet fight to gain the fitful bed in which it lies.
In Persia and in Palestine, in Java and in China, in southern Russia and in Rumania we know that petroleum is, for it has been found there. How great these fields or others in Europe, Asia, or Africa may be no one would dare to say. As yet, however, the petroleum of the world has come from this hemisphere.
The "oil spring" which George Washington found in western Virginia and by his last will called to the especial consideration of his trustees was the promise of a continental well which last year yielded 356,000,000 barrels. Each year has seen the prophecy unfulfilled that the peak of the possible yield had been reached.
From the mountains of western Pennsylvania into the very ocean bed of the Pacific and even beyond and into the broken strata of upturned Alaska, the oil prospector bored with his sharp tooth of steel and found oil. Hardly has one field fallen into a decline when another has come rushing into service. Only three years ago and all hopes were centered in Oklahoma, and then came Kansas, and then the turn went south again to Texas, and now it looks toward Louisiana. Geologists have estimated and estimated, and they do not differ widely, for few give more than thirty years of life to the petroleum sands of this country if the present yield is insisted upon. And yet there is so much of mystery in the hiding of this strange subterranean liquid that honest men will not say but that it will become a permanent factor in the world of light, heat, and power. If this is not so we are a fatuous people, for with every fifth man in the country the owner of an automobile and the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars for roads fit only for their use, and with ships by the hundred specially constructed to burn oil, we have surely given a large fortune in pledge of our faith that our pools of petroleum will not soon be drained dry, or that others elsewhere will come to our help.