IS ELECTRICITY DUTIABLE?

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11346, 14 April 1900, Page 6 (Supplement)

IS ELECTRICITY DUTIABLE?

The proposition of generating electricity on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls and transmitting the current to the American side for sale has raised a curious tariff question, which has excited considerable power among those interested in electric power along the border. The tariff law imposes a 10 per cent ad valorem rate on " unenumerated manufactured articles." The question at issue is this: Is electricity an " unenumcrated manufactured article" in the meaning of the law? If it is it must, of course" submit to the duty imposed like any other unenumerated manufactured produce of foreign origin. And yet there is nothing that resembles electricity which comes under the operation of tho tariff. Although an intangible something that no one can define, it is transmissible, can be measured easily and accurately, and is a vendible and valuable product.

At present the direct interest in the question is centred at Niagara Falls, where the Niagara Electric Power Company, located on the American side, is now the only manufactory generating electricity for .use on American territory in that neighbourhood. It is from this source that Buffalo and some other cities in New York State are drawing light and power. The Merchants' Exchange of Buffalo has passed a resolution against imposing the duty on the Canadian product should tho Canadian generating works be constructed and a transmission lino be thrown across the river. Prospectively, however, it concerns a much wider field than the radius of American territory which may be readied by the transmission lines of an electric power plant erected on the north bank of the Niagara River. It leally affects the entire border. Washington has a special interest in it, for the mining and smelting developments in that State and the adjoining province of British Columbia have already made a big market for electricity for light and power purposes. The distance to which electricity in these uses may he transmitted without material loss is being steadily lengthened, and it is quito possible now to erect generating works in British Columbia a hundred miles or more - from the border and transmit tho power generated to an American market for sale and use in competition with an American plant operated on American soil. The principle of the tariff law—the protection of home industry—brings electricity manufactured and marketed under such conditions clearly under the "unenumerated" dutiable clause, and it should pay the ad valorem rate on the volume which an indicator attached to the transmission line at the border shows to be entering American territory.— San Francisco Call."