The Niagara Peninsula, along the north shore of Lake Erie, is one of the finest fruit-growing districts in the world. Among other advantages the farmers here have cheap power from the Ontario "Hydro".

The big ditch that feeds the giant power station was cut through solid rock for miles and carries a stream of water thirty-nine feet deep and fifty feet wide, or more than the flow of a river.

A bucket of water dropped down this cliff to the Niagara River would strike with the force of thirty horse-power. Imagine 20,000 buckets dropped every second and you have the capacity of this 600,000 horsepower station.

sumption of electricity averaged less than twenty kilowatt hours for each household, seventy-five kilowatt hours are now used. To an extent formerly undreamed of, power has been put into the homes of the people, and they are using electric appliances in far greater number than persons of similar circumstances in the United States. Electric cooking stoves are being installed in southern Ontario at the rate of one thousand a month. Workingmen's wives have toasters, electric washers, electric fans, electric heaters, curling irons, and everything else the appliance companies can devise.

The Commission is especially proud of the way it has taken electricity out to the farms. Private companies usually find rural extensions too expensive, on account of the long distances between installations, and the relatively small volume of current used. The Commission has now enough rural lines to reach from New York to Atlanta, and it serves as many country homes as there are people living on farms in Rhode Island. Although the rates are higher than in the cities, I find that a farmer can light his house and barns, run an electric stove and household appliances, and a three-horse-power motor besides, for from six to eight dollars a month. The farmers of Ontario can afford to use electricity to run their pumps, separators, churns, milking machines, sawmills, choppers, and threshers-not because they are richer than other farmers, but because of low-cost power.

I have before me a schedule of the rates charged in the twelve largest cities of the province. For domestic service the average net cost ranges from 1.3 cents per kilowatt hour to 2.8 cents per kilowatt hour. The rates vary chiefly with distance. Toronto, ninety miles from Niagara, pays

2.1 cents per kilowatt hour, while Windsor, two hundred and fifty miles to the west, opposite Detroit, Michigan, is charged 2.6 cents. Commercial users, such as stores and office buildings, pay slightly higher rates, while factories are charged from $11.75 to $28.66 per horse-power per year. As with commercial companies, the "Hydro" rates decrease with the amount of power used. For households the secondary or larger-user rate is nowhere more than 1.8 cents, and in most places it is less. In Toronto, the average household electric light bill is less than a dollar and a quarter a month. At Windsor it is less than a dollar and three quarters. In the city of London, Ontario, the household consumption of electricity has under "Hydro" increased more than four hundred per cent. and the average cost has been reduced to less than one fourth of the former charges.

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CHAPTER XV

NIAGARA'S GIANT POWER STATION

YDRO'S" biggest feat in physical construction is the great development, known as the Queenston Chippewa plant, on the Niagara River. This station is designed to produce six hundred thousand horse-power, or about one sixth as much as all the electrical energy now generated in Canada. Suppose we visit it with one of the engineers. Stepping into an automobile, we drive first toward the falls, now partly obscured in the clouds of mist from the tumbling, roaring, boiling waters. Our way lies through the park the Canadians have made so that the people may enjoy for all time the approaches to this monarch among the wonders of Nature.

We stop at Chippewa, at the mouth of the Welland River. This stream used to empty into the Niagara River above the falls, but to-day its channel carries the water diverted from the Niagara for the supply of the power station. The river was deepened and widened for a distance of four and a half miles, and then a canal was dug through the remaining eight and a half miles to the site of the plant. Now we turn back, and as our car passes over one of the numerous bridges across the big ditch, we look down upon a miniature Panama Canal, fifty feet wide at water level, and thirty-nine feet deep. In many places it was cut through hills of rock to a depth of more than