The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1922-01-26

plimentary. The two men were orr
ginally staunch political and personal
friends.
Not much has been heard of late
about the great super power pro-
jects by which the w~aterpower from
Northern New England to the River
James in Virginia would be tied to-
gether in groups Of electric distrib-
uting units. The survey which was
made under the leadership of the
Geological Survey reached the state
Of a formal report, and this report
is apparently resting comfortably
meantime the Federal Power Com
mission seems to be lacking in pep
and their rules and the slowness
with which they bring their meth
DDS Of procedure up to date has
failed to rouse any enthusiasm.
The interest in developing Muscle
Shoals is entirely due to a realiza-
tion on the part Of the people of
the South in the great benefits that
can be made to ACQUIRE to a COM
munity or a section of the country
through utilizing its w~aterpower
resources. And what the South has
found its awakening is no more than
a possibility that exists elsewhere
throughout the country.
Hydro-electric plants in certain
parts of the South have recently
demonstrated that they could run a
superpower project of their own.
They distributed their power from
station to station, "tieing in" as
they call it, so that the system
developed by these different power
producers was made to serve over a
circuit sever hundred miles long.
II is just such a scheme as this that
is contemplated on a broader scale,
in the s~uperpower project from the
Androscoggin to the James. While
the elaborate survey submitted
earlier in the Winter by Secretary
of the Interior Fall, is apparently in
the someolent stage it is rather
amusing to read some backfire obvi-
ously put out in the interests of
builders of locomotives, in which it
is pointed out that "the team loco
motive of today is quite different
power from the locomotive of a
decade ago. And so, it may be re-
marked, the electric locomotive, and
the h~ydro-electric power and dis
trituting plants are also different
The steam locomotives Of the count
~ are not only avaricious consum-
erS of the products Of great
coal mines, but the almost univer-
sal use of steam is also responsible
for the railroads devoting about
half of all their transportation
facilities to the hauling Of coal.
This tremendous burden that is
thrown upon the transportation
facilities Of the country is one of
the things the agricultural inter-
ests are complaining of: and they ore
responsible for the high cost of liv-
ing and for the agricultural depres-
sion. While the Government urges
waterpower and hydro-electric de-
yelopment il still maintains restric-
tive rules that so curb the possibil-
ity of reasonable returns to invest
ors, that the forward progress of
this phase Of national develop
ment is apparently tagging. Mean
while hundreds Of thousands of men
and unlimited machinery and trans
portation are in constant operation
in order that piles Of coal may be
distributed here, there and every
where. so that it can be burned in a
definite firebox to heat the pipes in
a certain boiler, when everyone
knows that the commonsense Of the
thing is to develop central power
stations capable of transmitting all
this energy I'VE lines of wire "ire
by wire"
More han ffty-one per cent of
the homes in Des Moines, Iowa, are
owned by the occupants. At the
other end of the list is New York
City where 12.7 per cent of the
homes are occupied by their own
ers. The parents and grandparents
. of the adult class of today were US
ually owners of homes, and a half
century ago a man who owned no
home of his own was regarded as a
poor citizen. While homes are hard
to acquire under the changed con
ditions Of the country, yet, one
ought not to get too badly d~iscour-