The facts given above are all drawn from compiled statistics of the
city, and all show the splendid foundation that has been built for the
vast city of the near future when the electric elixir from Niagara’s
mighty power flows through all our commercial veins and arteries,
cheapening the cost of production so that outside competition can be
defied, building up every established enterprise, bringing numberless
new ones into life, and making of Buffalo the Manchester of the new
world! More than that, it will be the wonder of the world, the peerless,
marvelous electric city!
All this is coming. There is no chance about it. It is part of the great
onward movement of the world. It is human progress, but in this case it
is a tremendous stride, a lifetime of ordinary momentum at a bound.
Century after century the waters of the “unsalted seas” leaped over
Niagara’s precipice, full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing
beyond the grandeur of Nature in her wildest mood. Now, towards the
close of the nineteenth century, this marvel of force is chained to
man’s uses, and a power sufficient to run the machinery of the world is
levied upon for industrial purposes.
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