Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 74, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 March 1911 — ELECTRIC LIGHTS ON FARMS [ARTICLE]

ELECTRIC LIGHTS ON FARMS

Morning Chores Are Done Jn Kansas by the Aid of Electrletty—An Up-to-Date god House. Within ten years electricity will light a majority of the farm homes and country schools and churches of Kansis, It is predicted. Farm homes lighted with electricity are now numbered by hundreds. With the general use of the gasoline engine this has been made possible. Electric light and power companies In several of the cities are also making plans by which they can supply farmers with current from their trunk lines. A notable case of this sort Is found at Manhattan, where the power for electric generation Is furnished by a dam on the Big Blue river, four miles from the city. The current generated Is used for electric lighting and street car purposes In the city of Manhattan, and farmers living near the trunk line are using It In their residences, barns and feed lots. In the early morning hours, when the fanners toed and care for their stock and do the milking, electric lights are found to be very useful. In a rich farming community ten miles north of Atchison the farmers have decided to have aa eleetrlo light plant of theli own. They will build a

V' -S ' < 1 ' /• •mall power house where current wflff be generated and from which It. w*l be carried into their homes. Fifteen families will share in this modem tern of lighting. . „ Several farmers living ten mflsn west of Atchison have small dynamo* on their farms providing electric light for their homes, barns and dUqt buildings. ; | Recently the town of Troy, fort# miles north of Atchison, contracted fs# light from the Atchison plant. Atrank line wire was stretched betweese the two places, and now twenty-#** farmers along the route are connect* lng their homes with this trunk linh. Near Garden City, which a sane years ago was in the center of thw great American desert, there vs farms where all the buildings is* made of cement concrete and each Ms lighted with electricity generated by a gasoline engine on the place. The early pioneer way of living an# the modern system are blended on ees farm. A farmer is still living in a so# house built a quarter of A century sgnu He is constructing a new and up-to-date home in which he has installed a gasoline engine with which to generate electricity for lighting. He will not move out of t9»-cid so# house until March next because of Ite warmth and comfort in Winter, but ho Is enjoying eleotric lights in that primitive dwelling. It Is believed this to the only Instance in which a sod houso has been lighted by electricity. In the natural gas regions of southe astern Kansas the electric light so cheaper than gas.—New York Sun.