Forty Millions Spent in "Harnessing" Cataract at Niagara

HOW NIAGARA’S TORRENTIAL FORCES ARE BENT TO LABOR IN THE SERVICE OF MAN.

Five Industrial Companies in Competition to Utilize Strength of World’s Greatest Torrent.

TAKE 610,000 HORSE POWER

Factory City Thrives on Energy Derived from Great Volume of Great Lakes Waters.

Modern Science Gets “Sublime Confidence” of Priest Explorer To Do Work for Man.

ITS CAPACITY TREMENDOUS

Greatest Scientists Vary Widely in Estimates of Power — All Figure Up in Millions.

[SPECIAL DESPATCH TO THE HERALD.]
BUFFALO, N. Y., Saturday.

FATHER RAGUENEAU, a missionary priest of immortal memory, whose quaint description of his journey to America (published in 1648) is one of the curiosities of literature, wrote concerning Niagara Falls: —

“An unnamed, terrific torrent of waters, a cataract of fearsome height, appalling in its sublime majesty, a great and prodigious cadence of waters, which falls down after a surprising and astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its parallel.”

Modern science has most effectually solved the problem of setting this sublime cadence to work at the industrial treadmill. Charters have already been granted by the Legislature of New York and the Parliament of Canada under which 1,300,000 horse power will be abstracted from the falls. All kinds of estimates are being made of the total capacity of the falls of Niagara, the engineers all disagreeing with that amiable unanimity which characterizes such indefinite subjects. One estimate, made by Mr. Herschell, an engineer, was to this effect: —

“The water diverted from the river for operating as many turbines as may ever be required for industrial purposes will diminish the flow over the cataract imperceptibly, less, in fact, than it varies from month to month under natural conditions. It must be remembered that the rainfall in the Lake Superior district in April did not plunge over Niagara until October. It has often been said that the power lost at Niagara is twice as great as that required for driving all the machinery in the American continent. That is a remote approach to the truth, for I estimate that the waters of Niagara have a value of 4,000,000 horse power. It is inconceivable that any immense part of this tremendous force can ever be utilized. The extent of the tremendous development required to perceptibly diminish the flow of water over Niagara Falls is a problem of such a stupendous character it should be left to fantastic calculators.”

LORD KELVIN’S ESTIMATE.

Lord Kelvin sized up the falls as possessing in all about 7,500,000 horse power. He believed it would all be developed, too. Noble gave it as his opinion that men preferred money to scenery. His opinion was that when appliances were installed to develop 7,500,000 horse power the entire flow of the Niagara River would be working and taking its plunge of 160 feet down a mill pit instead of over the rock lip and brink of the precipice.

Tesla thinks the falls capable of producing 12,000,000 horse power. Edison and Thompson have not made a stagger at an estimate.

This much is known — that a tall race and a tunnel, to divert all the water from Niagara Falls would have to be 5,000 feet wide and 140 feet deep, or 200,000 square feet. The Niagara Falls Power Company produces 5,000 horse power from a tunnel 21 by 18 feet, equal to a head of 160 feet, the water escaping after its terrific drop through an orifice 124 inches. The majority believe that Niagara Falls has a capacity of 1,400,000,000 horse power.

So the estimates of Niagara’s capacity vary from 5,878,100 horse power to 1,400,000,000 horse power.

At any rate, ten great power companies on the American side and six in Canada possess charters to apply the energy of Niagara Falls. Five of these companies are hard at work. Niagara Falls has grown more rapidly, in an industrial sense, than any other city in the world, her increase being at the rate of 253 per cent. Ten years ago Niagara Falls was an inconsequential village, a summer resort, possessing a population of rubber-neck men and piratical hackmen. Now Niagara Falls is a great manufacturing city and recognized as the home of the world’s greatest users of hydraulic electric power. The power situation at Niagara Falls to-day is about this: —

Amid this tremendous development of power and the walls that these “vain-glorious engineers” are going to ruin the beauty of the cataract, the question is often asked as to the identity of the father of Niagara Falls power.

It was in the year 1842 that the Porter family donated the land necessary for the construction of a canal extending from the upper river to the edge of the high bank, a short distance below the falls. That year Caleb J. Woodhull and Walter Bryant undertook to build this canal. It was to be an old fashioned millrace. The work was found to be terribly expensive, and the width of the canal was cut down to 70 feet with a depth of 10 feet. After sixteen months’ work these pioneers of the Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company became bankrupt, and the lack of funds caused them to suspend operations. In 1858 work on this elementary power canal was resumed by the Niagara Falls Water Power Company, with Stephen G. Allen as president. Then in 1860, Horace H. Day bought out the company and all its rights. The canal was now still further reduced to 36 feet wide and 8 feet deep, and at these proportions it was finished. The civil war then began and no further development was attempted. For years and years the canal stream poured over the cliff unused. In 1877 Thomas B. Gaskill built a grist mill at the lower end of the canal, and this gentleman was the first user of Niagara Falls power. The canal property and all its rights were bought by the late Jacob F. Schoellkopf and the late Abram Cheesbrough in 1877, and these men organized the present Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company. From this date up to the present day the development of this company has continued steadily. The canal has been widened from its original 36 feet to 100½ feet. It is now 8,600 feet long. The company is now selling 75,000 horse power or more and is developing an additional 100,000 horse power. It has three power houses, the latest one being built at the water’s edge in the gorge. This company now illuminates Niagara Falls, furnishes power to the Pittsburg Reduction Company and drives the wheels of seven great industries, including two paper manufacturing companies, a brewery, two silver manufacturing concerns, the gorge railway and other concerns.

FINANCIAL BACKERS.

It must be remembered that the early development of the Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company was begun before engineers dared design and build water wheels for use under the high head possible in connection with a plant at Niagara Falls, but now the proposition is able to stand upon a basis attractive to capitalists. Numerous elaborate plans were designed and seriously considered. Many of these are not more than twenty years old, yet they look most grotesque. The Niagara Falls Power Company, the first concern to adopt the tunnel plan, was readily financed by the Vanderbilts, D. Ogden Mills, Francis Lynde Stetson, John J. Hill, A. J. Cassatt, Hamilton McK. Twombly, Morris K. Jesup, Edward D. Adams, Isaac N. Seligman, J. Pierpont Morgan, Edward A. Wickes, George H. Kent, Charles Lanier, Edward Winslow and others. The company was incorporated in 1886, work was begun in 1887, and on January 25, 1894, the first of the many turbines of the great system was brought into use. The great turbine system of this company, with its wheel pits and tunnel of brick and steel, is now well known over the whole civilized world.

The two power houses of this company are now producing 110,000 horse power. This company now furnishes energy for 119 great industries, transmitting its power a distance of thirty-five miles. It runs all the trolleys of the International Traction Company, which includes all the surface roads of Buffalo and vicinity. Seventy-four of the largest mills, elevators and manufacturing enterprises in Buffalo take power from this company. The company may treble its present capacity for the production of power.

Then on the Canadian side of the river came the electrical development company of Ontario, known as the Ontario Power Company, and the Toronto and Niagara Power Company. The Ontario company’s plant, now nearing completion, represents an investment of $6,000,000. When the enterprise achieves its full power it will produce 600,000 horse power.

The figures showing the present capacity of the various power companies operating at Niagara Falls will be alike interesting to the industrial world and to the men and women who fear for the future of the marvellous waterfall: —

All of this power is not now on the market. In fact, not more than 40,000 horse power is being delivered at present inside the limits of Buffalo. But the Canadian Niagara company, which is the Canadian ally of the Niagara Falls Power Company and is owned and operated by the same men, is constructing a transmission line on the Canadian shore of the Niagara River and will soon cross to this city with 50,000 more horse power. This new line will span the river two hundred feet above the water. The cables will leave Canada at Fort Erie and take the American poles near the Buffalo-Fort Erie ferry docks, at Ferry street.

The Niagara Falls Power Company and the Canadian Niagara Power Company are together the largest distributing agency at the falls, the aggregate of their output being 300,000 horse power. They have three interconnected power houses, eight transmission lines and two distinct and separate routes to Buffalo. The objection heretofore made that electrical power may be unreliable through interference from storms is obviated by this duplicated service.

It is expected that the greater part of the current generated by the Ontario Power Company will be utilized in the electrification of the New York Central and West Shore lines between Buffalo and Syracuse. It is understood to be the present intention also to furnish power for the traction lines of both Rochester and Syracuse. Transmission will be constructed also to St. Catharines, Hamilton and Toronto.

It is related as an obvious fact that many of the industries recently established on the Niagara frontier were induced to locate here because of the economy of electrical power. But it is further argued that this section has the advantage over other localities having power at similarly low rates on account of the remarkably favorable transportation facilities by rail and water, and because of the adaptability of the level land for factory and other industrial purposes. Other great waterfalls are located as a rule in mountainous regions, where industrial advancement is greatly handicapped by lack of transportation facilities and because of the extra cost of razing and filling sites for factories. Those who have been using Niagara power since its entry to Buffalo are so thoroughly convinced of its efficiency and reliability that it is doubtful if any ordinary inducement would tempt them to return to steam. A business man stated the matter concisely when he said: —

“The coal strike now in prospect has no terrors for me. I have no interest in whether coal is mined for the next two years. So long as the Niagara River flows steadily toward the falls I’ll get all the power I want. I am relieved also of the possibility of other labor troubles in connection with the use of steam, to say nothing of the cleanliness of electric power.”

It is estimated that about $40,000,000 is invested at Niagara Falls in the canals, power houses, transmission lines and appurtenances for the generation and distribution of electrical power.

Foremost among the investors in the power production enterprises are the Vanderbilt interests, D. Ogden Mills, Francis Lynde Stetson, John Jacob Astor, Andrew Carnegie, Edward D. Adams, Edward A. Wickes, George S. Bowdoin, J. Pierpont Morgan, George Westinghouse, A. J. Cassatt, James J. Hill and a host of others whose names are known throughout the financial world.

The Ontario Power Company’s generating station is located below the bank, just north of the Horseshoe Falls, on the Canadian side. This company has the biggest power development in progress in the world, planning to develop 240,000 electric horse power. In the station at the foot of the bank is already developed 40,000 electric horse power from three units now in operation, and three more units will be installed by June 1. After that the power house will be extended and it will ultimately be four times the extent of the present plant.

The tower line of transmission cables of the Ontario Power Company is three deep as it approaches the Niagara gorge four miles below the falls. This is seen from the American falls. The nine cables are composed of thirty-six strands of aluminum, and carry the power that is sent to Syracuse and south of Buffalo. At the American side it is received by the Niagara, Lockport and Ontario Company and is carried to Lockport on a right of way 300 feet wide. At Lockport the line divides, one branch going south, skirting Buffalo and terminating at Depew and the plant of the Lackawanna Steel Company. This right of way to the south is 200 feet wide. The capacity of the line as indicated by the width of the right of way is 200,000 electric horse power to Rochester and 90,000 to Syracuse.

The perfect insulation of this company enables it to carry power to Syracuse with but seven and one-half per cent loss. These insulators are of seventy-five pounds weight and stand twenty-eight inches high. They are the largest ever made.

The skilled engineers and scientists who have laid the hand of ingenuity upon the awful grandeurs of nature’s most wonderful cataract and made its forces work for mankind include Lord Kelvin, Henry L. Edison, Nikola Tesla, Thompson, Ericsson and Fronde, whose ideas are included in one or all of the gigantic enterprises now transforming the valley and gorge of Niagara into the beehive of the world’s workshops.

Niagara, which is the terminus of miles of navigable shore line, the terminus of waters which float a tonnage exceeding that of the entire Atlantic and Pacific board, and bordered by lands unequaled in wealth of mine and soil, occupies the most commanding position in the commercial world. To the ports on Lake Erie come annually 31,000,000 tons of iron ore. Of the 250,000,000 tons of coal mined in the United States annually Pennsylvania furnishes more than half. The iron ore must come to the coal. The ore comes down the lakes; the coal and coke must go up the line. These commodities must and do meet at Buffalo; hence iron ore can be produced more cheaply at Buffalo than any other place in the world.

QUESTION OF EXPENSE.

Niagara Falls power is being contracted for at from $8 to $50 per horse power per year of 365 days, according to the location and quantity, counting twenty-four hours per day for hydraulic and electric power. While the average cost of steam power (United States census) is $36 per horse power per year of 313 days, counting ten hours per day. Therefore, the cost of steam power, on the basis of 365 days per year, counting twenty-four hours per day, would be $86.40 per horse power.

As an example of the saving of Niagara power, mention may be made of the International Paper Company, now running at Niagara Falls, having contracted for 6,000 horse power at $9 per horse power, or $54,000 per year. The estimated cost by steam power is $318,400 per year, a saving of $264,400 in favor of electric power. Another example is the Pittsburg Reduction Company, which controls the aluminum industry of the country, having contracted for 15,000 horse power, including two acres of ground. This company left Pittsburg where coal was to be had at sixty-eight cents per ton, and came here to get the benefit of electric power. Many manufacturers can save enough, it is asserted, at Niagara Falls on power in one year to pay for building and the cost of moving.

Both of the plants mentioned have more than doubled their power capacity since moving to the Niagara frontier.

Since the development of Niagara Falls power the population of the Niagara frontier has increased about 350,000, this increase following on the development and the delivery of less than 100,000 horse power. In 1890 the population of Niagara Falls was 5,502. In 1900 it was 19,457. To-day it is greater than 28,000.

The Niagara Falls Power Company has obtained “tenants,” so called, for its power, as rapidly as the company has been able to deliver it. The factory zone now extends from La Salle to the northern boundary. In addition to this the Niagara Falls Power Company has just bought 56 acres (two and a half square miles) of factory sites at the north end of Niagara Falls. The Schoellkopf Company, the Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company, has bought 128 acres. The Ontario Power Company bought 1,400 acres of factory sites, all running a solid belt of factory sites, running back from Suspension Bridge on the line of Lockport avenue and Ontario avenue, intersected by Sugar street.

Here is where the effect of this development is to be seen in land values. Here property could be bought a few years ago at from $75 to $200 an acre. It is now worth from $3,000 to $5,000 an acre. A corner lot, which a few years ago was part of a farm that was sold at $125 an acre, was sold last year for $350. The same lot was resold on February 27, 1906, for $1,125. It was a corner lot, 40×120, and was wanted for a store. So much for the north end development of the Niagara frontier.