The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1905-07-16
POWER NOW GOING 40 WASTE.
work That Electricity VIII DO Some Day
In Farming Districts.

WOfh lHht EioctflChty Will DO bOno uSy
in Farming Districts.
It begins to look as II local electrical
companies In all the hill regions Of the
United States might revive and extend
home and farm industries. A New Yorker
with interests In northern New England
recently came back from q visit to the hill
country Of southern Pennsylvania and
northern Delaware with visions OF wealth.
What he had seen down there filed him
With astonishment at the slowness Of his
New England neighbors.
He found the country full OF old mills
abandoned because the coming OF manu-
features on a large scale had made 1t i'm
possible that the small mills should live
and prosper. Some OF these sites had
been abandoned for fifteen or twenty years.
Their dams were almost gone. Others
were still In Use only to make cider IN autumn
or to saw few thousand feet Of lumber.
But the power was all there ready to be
harnessed for use. Some he found that
had been bought up and turned to account
BY companies generating electricity for
light and power.
One such was paying enormous dividends
and yet furnishing light and power 30
SAASofAy eiuo tuo AiclSuDOIlk WcIo
not only lighting their houses and barns
with the current, but were using it instead
OF windmills to pump water. and apply
ing 1t instead Of horses or man power to
their cornshelers.
The New Workers. inquiries as to this
particular case showed these facts The
owners of the company had bought long
abandoned mill site on a stream that had
three other mill sites in active operation
from one to four miles above. The cost Of
the mill site and the generating plant was
$4,000.
The annual wage account was hardly
more than 5000. The ordinary expenses
for repairs were light. When running at
full power the plant was able To furnish
$500 lights, and the total income was $l0O
a day.
In other words, on an initial expenditure
OF $4,000 the annual profit, when interest.
wages, repairs and incidentals were taken
out, was we'll on toward $4,000, and the
company was piling up a handsome surplus
after paying its big dividends. All this
was going on in a country where the farm
ers are not rich and where they have been
accustomed for generations to counting the
cents as some folks count dollars.
Looking little further into the matter,
the New Yorker found that the company
doing business at the old mill site stood
ready to light the public roads at low prices
and to furnish public and private lighting
in villages, There seemed no reason why
that single mill site should not do half the
work of all the farmers within miles and
have energy left to light the country roads
and village streets.
Since the New Workers. investigation
another inadequately' managed water
power on the same stream has been bought
up and developed. Local experts prophe
sled ruin to the purchaser and estimated
that his dam and race would not yield him
more than % horsepower He Is now
getting $50 horsepower, and the dam and
race are not yet doing all that is expected
Of them
With all this before him the New Yorker
Is expecting to do wonders in his New Eng
land summer home. All about him album
dant water power is g oing to waste, while the
farmers light their houses with kerosene and
their barns not at all, shell their corn by
hand or by hand driven machines and
pump water for house and stock by can
' He hopes " to Change all that and to set
the streams to work at these domestic
operations. Whether the Yankee house,
wives will get down their old spinning
wheels and long forgotten looms from
the garnet and turn out cloth for their
husbands coats he is not yet ready to
prophesy, but he has notion that ingen-
ious New Englanders can at least make
full use of the electrical power at their
doors.