Such a project known as the " Superpower System for the Region between Boston and Washington " has been carefully worked out by the United States Geological Survey.* (See Fig. 37.) The plan contemplates a main electric power line running between these two cities. Into this will feed all the isolated power plants now run inde pendently and at considerable waste. If the plan should be adopted, users of power would not hereafter develop their own supply, but would tap the main power line. It is estimated that the plan could be com pletely installed within ten years and that it would save about 50,000,000 tons of coal per year, as follows: To hope that by such methods the use of coal may some day be cut in half seems not unreasonable. The amount of saving depends largely on the extent to which people can get together and carry out great cooperative enterprises with the assistance of the government without the private jealousy and greed and the political inefficiency, waste, and often corruption, which spoil most attempts at cooperation.
(4) New Sources of Power.—One of the greatest differences between a grown person and a child is that the child looks only at the present while the grown person looks ahead. Between people with poor minds and those with strong minds there is the same difference: the dull incompetent person looks only at tomorrow or next week; the com petent person looks at next year. The highest type of all looks ahead] for decades and centuries. One of the probabilities of the future is that no matter how well we conserve_ our coal and utilize our water power the demand for power will necessitate other and ampler supplies. Four sources have been suggested. One is the wind. In the aggregate the power of wind vastly exceeds that of water. Its inconstancy, however, has caused the of windmills to decline quite steadily during recent decades and this difficulty seems insuperable until some very cheap storage battery or other means of storing power is devised.
,Other possible sources of power are the internal heat of the earth, the heal of volcanoes which is actually used to a slight extent near Naples, the tides, and the energy of substances like radium, but as yet no practical means of getting large supplies of power from these sources have been devised.
The'most hopeful source of energy is the heat of the sun. In sunny
regions like Arizona it is easily possible to arrange mirrors so that the sun heats water and runs a steam engine. It is likewise possible to run an ether engine by allowing a reservoir of water, perhaps under glass, to be heated by the sun to a temperature of F. more or less, and then used to vaporize ether, while cold water, perhaps from a mountain stream, is used to cool and thereby condense the ether. Or perhaps the method of capturing the power of the sun may be by allowing sunlight to produce some chemical change which takes place slowly, but can later be quickly reversed with the liberation in a few minutes of the power stored up during many days. None of these methods yet produces power as cheaply as it can be obtained from coal, but they hold out real promise for the future.
While it is impossible to foretell how the world will eventually get its supply of power, it is worth while for every progressive business man to consider the value of supporting the purely scientific investi gations which will some day lead to such great practical results. Almost any investigation in physics, chemistry, or bio-chemistry, may furnish the clue which will one day give us a world where power is so abundant that it can be used freely everywhere. In such a world it will be porn Bible to irrigate every desert no matter how dry, for sea water could he distilled if necessary, and pumped an indefinite distance. In such a world it might be possible to make almost indestructible roads by actually fusing the materials which bind the stones together, thus making a roadbed of practically solid stone. In such a world cities would be cleaner and more healthful than now because there would be far less dust and smoke, and because transportation would be cheap ened and congestion relieved. And everywhere, including especially the warm unhealthful parts of the globe, people's health would be much improved because ventilation, sanitation, and travel ivould be so much easier than now. Moreover, many of the hardest kinds of work would be greatly reduced in amount, for everyone could use electrical machinery for purposes which are now possible only to the rich and for many purposes of which as yet men merely dream.