since the inauguration of electrical transmission, is available for
local rail lines and offers the best solution of local
transportation problems. In many parts of the country local and
interurban lines are providing transportation to farm areas, thereby
increasing facilities for moving crops and adding to the profit and
convenience of farm life. However, there seems to be a very general
lack of appreciation of the possibilities of this water-power
resource as governing transportation costs.

"The streams may be also used as small water power on thousands of
farms. This is particularly true of small streams. Much of the labor
about the house and barn can be performed by transmission of power
from small water wheels running on the farms themselves or in the
neighborhood. This power could be used for electric lighting and for
small manufacture. It is more important that small power be
developed on the farms of the United States than that we harness
Niagara.

"Unfortunately, the tendency of the present laws is to encourage the
acquisition of these resources on easy terms, or on their own terms,
by the first applicants, and the power of the streams is rapidly
being acquired under conditions that lead to the concentration of
ownership in the hands of the monopolies. This constitutes a real
and immediate danger, not to the country-life interests alone, but
to the entire nation, and it is time that the whole people become
aroused to it.

"The forests have been exploited for private gain not only until the
timber has been seriously reduced, but until streams have been
ruined for navigation, power, irrigation, and common water supplies,