Page:A History of the Pacific Northwest.djvu/321



2 8o A History of the Pacific Northwest

would depend on the demand for artificial fertilizers occasioned by the change to a more intensive agriculture, and the very rapid development of horticulture and of truck farming in the region itself and in other accessible regions.

The prospective general use of electric power in industry. The abundance of water powers in these states has also suggested a very general and widespread use of electric energy for the doing of all kinds of work like driving machinery in shops, and even in homes, as well as in factories. Being both cheap and easy to distribute and to apply under favourable conditions, the small business can employ it almost as economically as the large one. Some of the cities of the Northwest have municipally owned power plants, others privately owned. The economy involved in a large scale development of powers, instead of small ones, stimulates the quest for a market for electric energy beyond that implied in a demand for electric lighting. All are therefore trying to sell energy for every purpose in the towns served by power plants. Beginnings have already been made toward equipping homes with electric heating appliances, which can be done where power is cheap at rates which are economical as compared with heating by means of wood or coal. There are chimneyless farmhouses in certain sections, all cooking as well as heating being done with electricity. On some farms, too, electric power is employed to drive household and bam machinery, to pump water, etc. If those thinkers are right who ad