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NIAGARA’S voice sings a new song.
Through countless ages it has thundered forth its wild, tumultuous
melody, a pæan to nature in every tone.
Now it sings an anthem to industry, to science, to inventive genius, to
commercial prosperity.
The magic wand of the electrician has been waved, and the mighty voice
swells and roars to new music of new and marvelous power.
The new song rising from the mist and the spray of the cataract heralds
a new era in Buffalo.
It heralds the evolution of the Queen City of the Lakes into the
Electric City of the World; a smokeless, dustless, wholesome city where
the myriad and ever-increasing wheels of industry will turn with the
silent, unseen power generated from Niagara’s unceasing current; a city
that will grow and attract and gather force and wealth and people until
it comes to be known as _the New Wonder of the World_.
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When the city of Buffalo, under the favoring conditions which have
brought it to its present splendid eminence, doubles its population in
ten years, and increases in wealth seven million dollars yearly, what
can be foretold of it when in addition to all its present
wealth-producing resources it becomes the possessor of an unlimited
supply of the cheapest power in the whole world!
Contemplating this fact, the Chicago _Tribune_ said: “By virtue of
having the cheapest power for turning its machinery, Buffalo will
inevitably become the manufacturing centre of the nation.”
The New York _Tribune_ adds this weighty testimony to the greatness of
our future: “The past of Buffalo is secure, and her manifest destiny is
evidently to be something tremendous.”
Already preparations are being made to bring to Buffalo the electric
power from the great tunnel at Niagara Falls. Several companies have
been formed of foremost business men, who see that in the distribution
and application of the mighty power to industrial uses there are
fortunes to be made, and that the pioneers in the task will win the
chief prizes.
The time for discussing the practicability of bringing electric power
from Niagara Falls to Buffalo has gone by. Electrical science has
settled the question completely. It has been demonstrated beyond all
question that electric power can be transmitted long distances without
material loss.
A number of the greatest capitalists, and shrewdest investors in the
United States, are financially interested in the tunnel scheme. Before
they put up their money they satisfied themselves not only that the
power could be produced, but that it could be sold.
They looked at Buffalo, 22 miles away, and saw a city of nearly 300,000
inhabitants, spread over a large territory, with ample opportunity for
territorial growth beyond the present limits, a city in which 3,000 new
houses were built in the year 1891, and in which nearly one hundred
million dollars is invested in industrial enterprises. They saw a city
into which 26 lines of railroad enter, representing a total trackage of
about 25,000 miles, and including the great trunk lines leading east,
west, north and south, tapping all the rich raw-material storehouses of
the continent at all points. They saw that Buffalo had extraordinary
facilities for the distribution of manufactures by rail, facilities
created by the hand of industry, and they saw too nature’s grand gift in
the great chain of lakes, coupled to another gift of industry, the Erie
canal, giving us a water route to the Atlantic seaboard.
These men saw that here was the place where electric power could be
disposed of in enormous quantities. They knew that they could send it
here almost as cheaply as they could distribute it in the immediate
vicinity of its point of production, and they saw the mighty certainties
in a combination of unlimited cheap power for manufacturing and
extraordinary shipping facilities. They knew that a market for their
electrical product was forever assured, and they planted their millions
in the earth and rock of Niagara. Better investment was never made.
Read the names of some of the great financiers engaged in this
enterprise: William K. Vanderbilt, Chauncey M. Depew, Drexel, Morgan &
Co., August Belmont, Brown Bros. & Co., Isaac N. Seligman, Winslow,
Lamer & Co., Morris K. Jessup and others famous in the financial world.