THE WASTE FORCES OF NATURE.—For countless years the great cataracts, as for instance, Niagara, have been singing their solemn songs, filling the savage with terror, the civilized with awe; recording its achievements in books of stone—useless and sublime; inspiring beholders with the majesty of purposeless force and the wastefulness of nature.
Force great enough to turn the wheels of the world, lost, useless.
So with the great tides that rise and fall on all the shores of the world—lost forces. And yet man is compelled to use to exhaustion's point the little strength he has.
This will be changed.
The great cataracts and the great tides will submit to the genius of man. They are to be for use. Niagara will not be allowed to remain a barren roar. It must become the servant of man. It will weave robes for men and women. It will fashion implements for the farmer and the mechanic. It will propel coaches for rich and poor. It will fill streets and homes with light, and the old barren roar will be changed to songs of success, to the voices of love and content and joy.
Science at last has found that all forces are convertible into each other, and that all are only different aspects of one fact.
So the flood is still a terror, but, in my judgment, the time will come when the floods will be controlled by the genius of man, when the tributaries of the great rivers and their tributaries will be dammed in such a way as to collect the waters of every flood and give them out gradually through all the year, maintaining an equal current at all times in the great rivers.
We have at last found that force occupies a circle, that Niagara is a child of the Sun—that the sun shines, the mist rises, clouds form, the rain falls, the rivers flow to the lakes, and Niagara fills the heavens with its song. Man will arrest the falling flood; he will change its force to electricity; that is to say, to light, and then force will have made the circuit from light to light.