The star. (Reynoldsville, Pa.) 1892-1946, 1908-07-01


sulting engineer of the General Elec-
trio Company, predicts that all young
men now living will see the exhaus-
tion of our supply Of anthracite. The
natural course then will be to rely
upon our deposits of soft coal for pro-
lection against freezing, but the Gov
ernment, in DR.. Steinmetzs opinion,
will be obliged to prohibit this or the
air we breathe will become permeated
with poisonous gases. The hope of
the future for life, as DR.. Steinmetz
sees It, lies in electricity.
The United States that is to come
will be country entirely devoid of
it's present river scenery The rivers
| of the future will be merely a success
sion of sluggish lakes, with electrical
power stations in between. All the
little streams will have been utilized
and their combined strength con-
verged into the great bodies of water
that are to supply the heat, light and
power of the future.
But even the outstanding of all our
water power won't be sufficient.
There must be economy along other
lines. The energy of the sun itself
must be trapped and saved. Our
building methods will have to un-
dergo change. Provision will have
to be made for the utilization of the
suns rays in the heating of our (or
somebody elses) homes
DR.. Steinmetz also sees in the
minds eye the city of the future-a
collection of Office buildings, factories
and bachelor apartments. All the
married men with their families will
have moved to the water-courseless
country The development of the
uses of electricity is already bringing
this change about.
DR.. Steinmetz took this look into
the future in lecture at the Amer
lean Institute of Electrical Engineers,
33 West Thirty-ninth street The lee
ture was given for the New York
Electrical Trade School, and most of
the audience were students from that
institution. Dr. Steinmetz's subject
was hc Il utult VI EltClTlClly.
DR.. Steinmetz said that the handi-
cap against electricity now is its high
cost of production That high cost is
occasioned largely by the irregular
| nature of the distribution. Electricity
supplied for twenty-four hours to a
mill could be obtained on one cent
per kilowatt hour, whereas the cleo
tricity used for lighting purposes
would cost ten times as much. The
hope of the future for economy, in DR..
Steinmetzs opinion, lay in the or
ganizing of electrical power supply so
that 1t would go out evenly over the
twenty-four hours, and not in hap
hazard and unsystematic way as at
present.
"The cost of production" said DR..
Steinmetz, depends on the dstribu-
tion of the loads, and when they can
be evened out over the twehty-four
hours in a systematic way the end
will have come for kerosene and gas
as illuminants.
The same conditions will usher in
the age Of cooking by electricity, if
the coal supply hasn't given out be-
fore then.
THE time will come" said the pro-
fessor, when we will have no more
coal, and 1t is not far in the future.
Anthracite will not last long; many
of us who are here will be alive when
| the last is gone. Many of us will see
the time when there is only soft coal.
Some of you may see the time when
soft coal is exhausted, but probably
not, for there is supply of this even
in Greenland's icy mountains. But,
nevertheless, we can, see the end, and
when we approach it what are we GO
ing to do to keep from freezing?
That seems to be the problem that the
next generation will have to meet,
and maybe we ourselves.
But the Nation also will have to
wake up to the problem of the poison
that escapes in the burning of soft
coal. Look out around Pittsburg
where we see the pine trees dying.
They have been poisoned. The ever
green tree, like ourselves, has only
one set of lungs. Other trees get
new set every year. If you go through
all those valleys where the great steel
plants are you will never find a pine.
1t may be even before the soft coal
is gone that we may have to drop its
use, that we will wake up to the vic
iousness of the practice of burning It.
And what does this mean? It
means that we must use electrical
power. When we reach the end of
the soft coal the only remaining
sources that will keep us from freez-
ing are the water powers. We are
developing the country's water power
now, but we are only making be-
ginning. In the single State of Mas
sachusetts there is more water power
going to waste than is found in Nj
agara herself.
Electricity in the future will have
to solve the problem of collecting the
water power. Now we convert 1t
where we find it into electricity; we
haven't started collecting it as yet.
We have been dreaming of transport
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