It is three years since Congress was urged that we should be empowered
to make a study of the power possibilities of the congested industrial
part of the Atlantic seaboard, with a view to developing not only the
fact that there could be effected a great saving in power and a much
larger actual use secured out of that now produced, but also that new
supplies could be obtained both from running water and from the
conversion of coal at the mines instead of after a long rail haul. A
stream of power paralleling the Atlantic from Richmond to Boston, a main
channel into which run many minor feeding streams and from which diverge
an infinite number of small delivering lines--the whole an interlocking
system that would take from the coal mine and the railroad a part of
their present burden and insure the operation of street lights, street
cars, elevators, and essential industries in the face of railroad
delinquencies--this is the dream of our engineers, and a very possible
dream it has seemed to me; of such value, indeed, that we might well
spend a few thousand dollars in studying it, not with the thought that
the Government would construct or operate even the trunk line, but that
it might so attract the attention of the engineering and financial world
as to make it a reality.
To tie together the separated power plants of 10 States so that one can
give aid to the other, so that one can take the place of the other, so
that all may join their power for good in any great drive that may be
projected--this would be the prime purpose of the plan; and from this
would evolve the development of the most practicable method of supplying
this vast interdependent system with more power--perhaps from the
conversion of coal, as it drops from the very tipple, using the mine as
one might use a waterfall, or by the development of great hydroelectric
plants on the many streams from the Androscoggin to the James.