“THE INTERVENTION OF NIAGARA FALLS.”

Taranaki Herald, Volume LX, Issue 143770, 19 April 1912, Page 7

“THE INTERVENTION OF NIAGARA FALLS.”

The very important part which the Falls of Niagara is playing in the life of the people of that portion of the North American continent is very well described in the Pall Mall Magazine for February by Mr. W. Arnot Craick. The business man in ■ the city of Toronto, fifty miles as the crow flies from the Falls, and eighty-three miles by rail, around the head of Lake Ontario, from whewe the Suspension Bridge spans its rociiy gorge, he tells us, rises from his bed in the cold, grey dawn of early morning, and floods his room by one twist of the fingers—with Niagara Falls. Borne aloft on slim steel towers, that stretch in long ghost-like procession over hill and valley, a distance of ninety-one miles from Toronto to the Palls, a thread of wire conveys an infinitesimal portion of the gigantic power of the mighty cataract into his bedchamber, and transforms the darkness into briUiant and cheerful light. The Toronto business man also heats his shaving water over —Niagara Falls. When he has dressed and goes down stairs h,e finds that his breakfast has been cooked by the far-distant energy of the falling water. After breakfast he telephones, it may be, over the longdistance wires to Montreal, New York, or Chicago, cities hundreds of miles away, his voice borne clearly and distinctly by—Niagara Falls. , Out in his garage his neat little electric runabout stands ready to whisk him to town, its batteries charged with power generated by the Falls. Niagara Falls is actually hauling the army of business people which he meets to their work, for it is the energy of the Falls which fills the overhead wires and drives the motors underneath. The roar of the machinery in his workshop is a miniature reproduction of the vaster sound of the cataract, every wheel in the shop turning by the resistless force of the falling torrents, ninety-two miles away. And the story might be repeated almost indefinitely. Niagara Falls, in short, is playing a tremendous part in the everyday life of the people, not only of Toronto, but of scores of other cities, towns, and villages within reach of its power, not to mention the farms where it is daily coming into greater and greater use. There are now six power companies developing electricity at Niagara Falls, two on the American side and four on the Canadian side, among them producing 416,000 house-power. In Ontario the largest power company now transmits a current a total distance of 2SI miles, and supplies twenty-two municipalities, running electric lights and electric railways, and supplying power for factories, and so on. The power lines are being extended, until Western Ontario, from Toronto to Windsor, will be supplied freely with energy from- the rnshing cataract.