The Kennewick courier-reporter. [volume] (Kennewick, Wash.) 1914-1938, 1923-10-18

d. y
notential horse power as in the other
| forty-three states combined.
Twenty-six million horses, eargerly
champing bits, straining in collars,
ready for the great race to determine
industrial advantage and commercial
ascendancy. Men of vision see the OPP
portunity and are grasping it-cap-
italists. engineers, business men of
every field of business.
Swiftly this great resource is being
developed. Huge dams, rising to dizzy
heights, span deep valleys and inn
pound vast reservoirs to feed the
great turbines. Under roaring falls
engineers drive tunnels upward and
secure the tremendous power of fall
of hundreds of feet. Great diversion
dams and irrigation works turn water
aside and carry it to millions of acres
of fertile farm land.
Operations on gigantic scale
mark these enterprises. Nowhere is
engineering more daring or trium-
plant. Here is one giant project, now
building, which will cost $57 LOON, 900.
1t is designed to produce $685. 900 horse
power-five times more power than
is available from all water resources
in Indiana, three times more than is
possible in Ohio, and more than twice
as much as Massachusetts can devel-
ope. A still greater project rivaling
the Panama Canal engineering feat,
would irrigate? 100000 acres of land
from series of huge dams and reser-
voirs to cost 100000.
Armies of workers, ant-like in their
surroundings and their task, pile up
mountains of concrete. Hundreds of
of miles Of power lines carry the cleo
trical energy to the mines, to the
factories, to transportation concerns,
and to the homes of the city and coun-
| try.
Already the states of the Pacific
Northwest have extensively developed
their vast power resources, and still
greater developments are constantly
bringing in new units to meet the in
|creasing power requirements of rap
idly growing country. Washington is
third among the states in developing
water power with 454,356 horse
power. Montana is fifth with 344, 420;
Idaho has 224,368; Oregon has 1885,
215; Wyoming has 1850. Projects
now under construction will swell
these totals enormously.
And already these states are of.
fering to industries, to homes and for
every purpose the advantage Of the
cheapest electrical power to be had
anywhere in the Unitd States. Be-
cause of the low rates the per capita
consumption of industrial power is
five times the average for the United
States. The average rate for water
power consumption in the large re-
gion last year was one and one sixth
cents per kilowatt hour, with even
cheaper rates for quantity, off-peak
load.
Thus is it's great gift of power
carrying the Pacific Northwest to
new heights of industrial eminence.
And yet the development of this rich
reource is only well begun. Twenty
times as much power as is now de-
veloped is still available.
Using large quantities of water
power the great mills and factories
of the Pacific Northwest are now
turning out manufactured products
with value of s., 500, 900 900 a year
and manufacturing is only on the
threshold of its possibilities.
With cheap power the tremendous
forest resources of the Pacific North
west, containing one half the stand
ing timber in the United States, are
being converted into lumber equal to
one-fourth the national cut-and gov
eminent experts say this output will
be doubled in fifteen years.
With cheap power the mines and oil
fields of Montana and Wyoming are
producing from immense deposits of
rich ores and coal million dollars
in new wealth every day-and yet a
treasure of thousands of billions is
only touched.
"The rising cost of fuel, due to
exhaustion Of cheaply operated coal
fields and higher prices for oil, means
ever increasing costs to manufacture
ers," declares the Water Power
League of America. Governments
are rushing hydraulic developments.
This means that nations are drawn
up in battle line for industrial suprem-
acy. The country able to furnish
cheap power to its manufacturers is
going to win"
In the. race for power the Pacific
Northwest runs with tremendous
advantage. Growing in population at
rate five times as fast as the ma
ton, with three and a half millions
already inside its borders, with ample
and abundant resources to support
five, ten or fifteen times that number,
this favored region looks ahead to a
destiny as Americas great new en-
pire of industry.