The Wilmington daily Republican. (Wilmington, Del.) 1890-1902, 1893-05-25
ptsSIMIST CORNERED

PESSIMIST CORNERED)
NATURES STORED POWER suFFl-
GENT FOR ANY EMERGENCY.
Wind and water Ready to Take tho Place
Of Coal--wAste In Present Methods Of
Food Production-The optimistio View
of the Earth's Future.
Pessimist-I have meat to eat, wool to
wear. coal to burn. My material wants arc
measurably satisfied. But the race Is
doomed. You and will not see the day,
but It will come, when coal is exhausted by
the ever increasing demand, when the earth
no more yields food for the starving mil
lions, when the temperate zones must be
abandoned for the lack Of fuel and under
the tropio sun men turned again to beasts
struggle for the mere privilege of living.
Arts, manufactures, sciences, everything,
will follow fuel and light into the void OF
the forgotten. Books will perish, cities
crumble and gibbering apes crawl again
where men walked, their degeneracy ac-
the cycle Of evolution com
|plete. Then let the suns paling light fall.
the quicker the better, on dead world,
white and frozen from pole to equator.
Optimist-Boshi There never was q great
human want that was not met. 1t Is a
short time, comparatively, since wood was
the fuel of the world. 1t became scarce
and coal was discovered in quantities ap
parently inexhaustible in spite of what
you say. But grant for the sake Of argu
ment that the use of coal must some day
cease. That ought not to worry us, nov
that the Niagara tunnel is opened
| Pessimist-What has that
Optimist-Everything. Light, heat, mo
ton, power are oil MANIFESTATION Of thu
same force and theoretically interchange
able. No one of them is ever lost. Tn,
trouble has been to manage the trausforma
ton. Power is plenty without coal, but i
isn't easy to lead 1t to its work. Try to d,
this with belts and shafts, and II the dis
ltance is great power becomes changed t,
heat by friction on the way. But nov
comes the great mutual reagent, electricity
At Lake HQslla in Sweden 800 horsepowe
arc to be genSfated by turbine water wheels
wired Six miles to lighting station ant
eight miles to power station. If six ant
eight miles, why not DO and s0f There
Niagara now In harness Buffalo will be
come greater manufacturing city thai
ever before, yet burn relatively les
Icoal. Every minute the water that glide
over that mighty cliff is the power equiva
lent Of thousands OF tons of coal. This en-
lcrgy can be sent by wire to New York
.youlike and used to run sausage grinders
Having learned to change heat to powe
and telegraph 1t where we like, we shal
learn to transmit power back into heat an
warm ourselves in winter by the Gran
falls of Labrador. Why go SO far? tn
local fields ore bottled sunshine from th
carboniferous period. Let's bottle on
: own. We have enough Of 1t in summer
Or catch the force of the tide whic
/, surges through our inlets and tur
that into power and heat. The
you'll see Jumps of coal in cabinet
, labeled, formerly used for fuel.
Then there Is the wind. More wind powe
Is used now than ever before, but its use
Just begun. 1t is free, inexhaustible. Pu
up your shaft anywhere and set Borea
4 grinding corn. 1t is irregular, but if thei
is cyclone in Kansas and calm in d.
r kota, Dakota can telegraph, PLEASE viii
y us 800 b. p. per minute t. f., and chg. to OF
acct" All this is supposing that coal rur
: out But it won't. We understand bette
the conservation as we'll as the correlatio
of energy. Many man is running a 80
: p. engine on less coal than he formerly ust
! for h. p. The Campania burns no MOI
: than the old Servia. We have wasted OIL
wood and our coal. Inventive genius
now economizing. There are plenty Of say
4 mills that use no fuel but the sawdust the
G make.
Pessimist-Yes, but foodf
Optimist--Waste again. We waste |
feeding corn to cattle and then eating Il
o cattle, instead OF eating the corn. Wewas
by turning sewage into the sea, instead
I, making it productive as at Pullman. v
l. waste by slovenly farming. There isalmo
no limit to the productiveness of sing
acre. Belgium teaches us that. The dens
the population the better the farming. \
q soil is SO poor that 1t cannot be made
s yield three or four big crops year by til
3, age, which is applied power, and by fert
m ization. Atwater has raised splendid GRO
on sea sand, which had been baked to
: stroy every atom of virtue In 1t. It
y all q question of power, power, power,
some one Of its forms, and when we his
harnessed Niagara to his pillow the farm
I produce of their pasture. Draw a circle
= 30 miles radius around New York. With
Y THAT circle can be raised all the food t,
W city needs, II you eliminate waste. Il
= desert of Sahara could feed every hum
ID being on the planet and cry for mol
1 Power, its transmission, transformati
: and economy, is the solution of the qut
n tion, and of power there ia no appare
,hl limit.
Pessimist--But there is heat. Heat
, from the sun, the tides from the sun a
~ moon combined. When the sun loses
d; hent it will cease to build clouds, and
agara will run dry. No wind will biz
as your wheels about. Your farmer will Ii
yo that which In more necessary than powell
plight and water. Where is humanity the
Optimist-I don't know. But are y
or sure the sun Is growing cold' Some say
Is Everlasting fires are stocked by consta
III rain of aerolites, the uncomfortable force
their impact transmitted to heat keepi
= him up to his work. The suns heat C,
~ not be lost. Nothing is lost 1t may
os changed to another form of energy,
emerge when the whirling worlds in tn
orbits clash and from the nebula of tn
tunimaginable collision is fashioned fortl
universe.
es Pessimist-Well. we're all right for I
! !" present anyhow.
y Optimist-So you said in the first pla
se Have you seen Jones today2-John L. II
s,e ton in New York Recorder.
or
l Mr. Mccarthy Was Too Premature.
nd Mr.. Mccarthy of Norwalk was indiscr
es enough to secure his marriage certific
iii before he put the important question to