SOME ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF ELECTRIC

POWER DISTRIBUTION.

BY LOUIS BELL.

[Louis Bell, consulting electric engineer; born Chester, N. H., Dec. 5, 1864; resides in Boston, where, besides his active life in his profession, he has found time to write many scientific and technical essays chiefly for the Engineering Magazine, in which the article here published first appeared; also author of the following books among others: The Electric Railway, Electrical Power Distribution, Power Distribution for Electrical Railways, The Art of Illumination.] Copyright 1905 by John R. Dunlap

Much of the complicated mechanism which we are pleased to call modern civilization has for its purpose the survival of the unfittest and the subversion of natural laws. Instead of punishing criminals, we spin fine drawn theories about them and turn them loose to be a drag upon the progress of decent society. Instead of segregating degenerates in suitable asylums, we form societies for the study of their literary and artistic works and pay two dollars per seat to hear their mephitic plays. We treat economic laws with even more contempt than civil and criminal laws. Professors of the dismal science sometimes speak of the law of supply and demand as bearing at least some remote relation to actual human needs, while in reality the basis of many movements in modern industry is the substitution of an artificial law for the natural one. If vested interests have acquired an unprofitable railroad, which upon a sound commercial basis should not have been built prior to 1950, there is at once a cry for such a "readjustment" of rates as shall charge up the loss to communities along lines which were more wisely planned. Fortunately, civilization brings good along with evil; and while there is terrible loss of energy in the artificial methods employed, there is still progress, not so much perhaps as the world flatters itself in thinking, but progress nevertheless.

In the last resort, the substance of civilization is human development-all the rest is accident. The Greeks had no knowledge of steamships railroads, electric lights, telegraphs,

or automobiles-they would have offered hemlock to the man who tried to start a telephone exchange; and yet no people ever reached a higher plane of thought or action. Likewise our little Japanese friends, cheerfully hailed as barbarians fifty years ago, had in reality risen to a mental and spiritual height that enabled them in thirty years to grasp the material advances of well nigh thirty centuries.

The lesson to be learned, then, is to value the achievements of modern science and industry not upon their proceeds in dollars and cents next week or next year, but by their effect upon the growth of human kind and the evolution of society. In discussing, then, the effects of a particular branch of technical progress, it should be considered in this broader aspect, not merely from the so-called "economic" standpoint, which is concerned exclusively with the balance sheet. To come down to the concrete, in the larger view of things it is of little consequence that John Doe should contract for electric power at an annual saving of $10,000, as in nine cases out of ten he will merely put the money in his pocket; the real importance of the gain is measured by the number of people benefited by it. If, on the other hand, the contract enables John Doe to put out his goods at a lower price, or to reduce the hours of labor, or to do anything else to the advantage of his fellowman as well as himself, that contract is of direct value to the community. On the contrary, if a similar contract enables Richard Roe to start an industry where none was before, to open a new bit of territory to human activity, the community is at once directly the gainer and electric power is no longer an instrument of private gain, but of general welfare.

Of course, one may say that all private gain goes ultimately to the increase of industry; but unhappily the self constituted redistributor of wealth is not always a philanthropist in the proper sense of the term, and vague and indirect methods are usually inefficient ones. The special topic of interest here is the direct usefulness of electric power in the generalization of human activity, rather than its impossible indirect value in enabling John Doe's heirs to assist in developing the French automobile industry.

The distribution of manufactures in our own or any other country would be a most curious and interesting subject of study. The first thing to stand out conspicuously in the investigation would be the gradual tendency toward concentration in the larger cities, and the gradual recession of manufactures outside them. Certain sections of the country are full of decaying communities, once active, but from which the chief industries have been withdrawn. If investigation disclosed the fact that certain centers of manufactures had become such through the pre-eminent natural advantages, such a condition would be easily explained; but in fact, natural advantages have comparatively little to do with the matter. It is common enough to find large manufacturing plants of a particular kind concentrated in a place that is only moderately good as a working point. Some one shrewdly managed factory has made a success there, and has gathered others about it till by sheer force of output and combination of interests they have frozen out the scattered factories with small capital. Taking into account the steady tendency of population to move toward the cities for various causes, the outlook for local enterprises seems far from good. In fact, the situation is fraught with the gravest dangers to the community at large. A country consisting mainly of large cities with merely incidental rural population has taken a long step toward final disintegration. Moreover, even if actual disintegration is not eminent, there exists the curious and anomalous condition of a community in which the transportation and distribution of commodities is the predominant element-in which producer and consumer stand at the ends of a long chain of intermediaries. It is bad enough in this respect, even at present, but every step toward further concentration of industry and population makes it worse. No country in which the productive forces are steadily being subordinated to an intricate (and, upon the whole, wasteful) mechanism of distribution can long remain prosperous.

It is the recognition of this general principle that is the basis of the present agitation for regulation of railway rates and of similar movements.

Starting with the condition that wide distribution of industries is desirable in order to render more simple and efficient the mechanism of commerce, there are two prominent factors in the problem at hand. The first is improvement in the organization of transportation so that needless work can be in part eliminated. The second is such an equalization of the industrial conditions that bear upon manufacture as shall minimize the legitimate need for transportation. For economical manufacturing, one must have moderate costs of raw material, labor, and power. The two former are strongly affected by transportation conditions, as is also the last named when its source is fuel.

The importance of electric power distribution from this standpoint is already great and will become greater. If one takes a map showing the distribution of the coal in the United States, it is at once apparent that by far the greater part of the territory either has no fuel at all, or little, and that of poor quality. Wood has been practically eliminated from the question by the rapacious wastefulness of the last quarter of a century. Hence as regards the country at large there is a heavy transportation charge on power. Within the past ten years we have learned to utilize the water powers of the country (which, by the way, are as a whole in regions having least fuel) and cheap electric power has already done much to open new fields to manufacture, especially in the south, which is the natural field for cotton manufacture. In one particular the present working of hydraulic power is very faulty, and to this defect I wish to direct especial attention. In spite of the great growth of electric power transmission, its effect on the consumption of fuel has thus far been very small, owing to the fact that the great mass of hydraulic power, which is in small units, has practically not been touched at all.

Of our total water power, probably four fifths is in falls below 1,000 horsepower in capacity, and at the present time money can rarely be found for the development of small enterprises of this kind. Bankers as a rule have not the slightest interest in these small permanent investments. They will lend moderate amounts upon quick assets, but

frankly say-and with a showing of truth-that they handle a bond issue of millions with no more labor than one of a hundred thousand, and with ten times the profit.

To my personal knowledge, there are scores of water powers in New England able to furnish preposterously cheap power for small investment by transmission of trivial length, but they are cases for private investment and not for "financing." By utilizing such privileges it will often be possible for small industries to obtain power at less than half the cost paid by their larger competitors. The present adverse factors are mainly due to transportation. Putting aside the instances of deliberate discrimination in rates-which are altogether too common-there is a strong general tendency toward punishing the industries in small places situated on non-competitive lines. At this point the electric railway is beginning to come in as an ameliorating influence, and if its development is allowed to go on unimpeded, much good will be done. Every electric railway network means a readier market for every point touched, and when light freight haulage becomes more general the influence will be strongly felt, unless the nonurban communities are foolish enough to allow electric systems to be captured by the steam roads which now hold the field. The small hydraulic powers already referred to are well able to furnish cheap motive power for transportation, if given the chance, and thus to make the regions served more self supporting and self reliant.

The effect of cheap electric power in encouraging and conserving small industries has already been well demonstrated, particularly abroad. In several regions on the continent its introduction has preserved the industrial automony of large groups of villages threatened with extinction by the very forces more conspiciously active in the United States. Since the existence of a small industrial center means increased prosperity in all the region about it, the value of such a policy to the country is all the more evident.

Bearing in mind the cost of transportation, the manufactures which can profitably be carried on in small places having cheap power available are especially those in which the value of the finished product is due mainly to the expendi