POWER—AND USE FOR IT

Evening Post, Issue 79, 2 April 1936, Page 8

POWER—AND USE FOR IT

Thanks to electrical power planning completed in time to catch the "recovery" market, Britain's expansion in electrical power output from 1929 to 1935 is returned as 70 per cent., while the expansion in the rest of the world (parts of which were "electrified" in advance of Britain) is given as 20 per cent. Alongside this Rugby message comes another one announcing the beginning of a £60,000 expenditure on boring for oil near Portsmouth. Though coal, oil, and electricity are often cut-throat competitors (though sometimes cooperators) few people doubt that ultimately each power source will find its own niche. This belief, and the value of home-produced oil for military defence, will reconcile Britain's depressed coal-mining industry to the effort to find payable oil in the South of England, and to the remarkable progress of electrical power. Power

is one key to economic success, but it is not the only key. If it were, New Zealand with her hydro-electrical and coal resources would not have remained dependent entirely on three or four articles of farm export which now demand subsidy-help from a mere handful of people. Power docs its best work where there is also population.