Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 60, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1910 — GAINS FROM “WHITE COAL.” [ARTICLE]

GAINS FROM “WHITE COAL.”

Switzerland’* Advantages Throngk Water Power Are Innumerable. The freeing of the little republic from dependence upon the coal fields of Germany, thei reduction in the operating costs of the state-owned railroads and the city-owned street railways, the placing of Switzerland in a position of industrial advantage, are not the greatest gains which are to follow the development of its water power, says Frederic C. Howe in the Outlook. Possibly these are but the spectacular exhibits of what a country can do when it consciously alms to use its resources for the benefit of the people. These gains do not include the dreams which men have of the life and civilization which are to follow frpm this revolution in light, power and possibly heat as well. They do not include the freedom from drudg-, ery, the opportunity for culture and enlightenment, the brightening of farm life, of the woman as well as the man. Nor do they suggest the possibilities of a cheap rapid transportation, by means of which the farmer may become a city dweller and the clerk and the mechanic obtain a country home and both remain in close contact with work. For the problem of energy is the production of civilization and, with its costs reduced to a minimum, there are no limits to the visions which men may have of the society of tomorrow. Compare this achievement of Switzerland with the prodigal waste of the resources of America. Niagara has been abandoned to private exploitation without compensation to the state or nation and with no idea of service to the people. Only profits have fattened and monopoly made that much more secure. The Susquehanna, upper Mississippi, the mountain streams of Colorado, Wyoming and the middle west, as well as of the entire Pacific slope, have been inclosed with fraudulent claims or confirmed by grants In perpetuity to the electric-power trust. There has been no reservation of control over prices, no right to purchase by the state and no appreciable gain to the community. We, too, could boycott coal and light tjie nation and fire its boilers with the water power with which nature has endowed us; but the sovereignty of the state and the well being of the people have been abandoned at the behests of the powerful interests whose demands have been voiced in Congress and the Legislatures of our states by those who were sent there to represent the community.