Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/68

 $6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

naturally more abundant supply of coal. There are, however, signs of an approaching transformation in the conditions of industrial production.

Within the last twenty years science has disclosed the possi- bility of utilizing electricity as a source of energy for industrial purposes. Italy, the home of Volta and Galvani, has left indelible traces in this most recent development of electric science. Pacinotti and Ferraris have made startling discoveries in this field. It is as though the genius of the race had, through these two men, shown the way by which the economic renaissance of the country was to be accomplished. It is indeed from electricity that Italy has to expect the fullest devel- opment of her potentialities as an industrial power. The problem, the great national problem of Italy, as Nitti puts it, is the substitution for coal of another source of energy, electricity, or the so-called "white coal."

Nature, while making Italy poor in coal, has greatly favored her in point of waterfalls and waterways. The great coal mines of the world will certainly be exhausted some day; those of England within the next sixty years, according to the calcula- tions of Sir W. Armstrong, of Stanley Jevons, of the parliamentary committees of 1866 and 1873, and, most recently of all, of Loze. 1 Water, however, will always continue to flow from the perennial source of the mountains. This very fact will radi- cally change the conditions of industrial supremacy. The coal- producing countries which so far have been in control will see the end of their primacy through the exhaustion of their coal- beds, while the countries which, like Italy, have a wealth of potential energy stored up in their waterfalls will come to the front as the new centers of industrial production.

From calculations made by such an authority as Senator Colombo, the well-known engineer, it is estimated that the amount of energy available from this source would be about three million horse-power, while a committee of the Italian Sen- ate in 1894 raised this estimate to five millions. Now, if we consider that the great industrial countries like England, Ger-


 * E. Loz, Les eharbons britanniques et leur Ipuisement (Paris, 1900), 2 vols.