Two-charge rate. FIRST CHARGE FOR DEMAND. One dollar per kilowatt per month for the maximum 2-minute kilowatt demand during the month. SECOND CHARGE FOR ENERGY. Per kilowatt hours. For 1,000 kilowatt hours or less per month__ Excess over 1,000 kilowatt hours up to 2,000 kilowatt hours--- Excess over 2,000 kilowatt hours up to 3,000 kilowatt hours. Excess over 3,000 kilowatt hours up to 5,000 kilowatt hours‒‒‒‒‒‒ Excess over 5,000 kilowatt hours up to 10,000 kilowatt hours__. Excess over 10,000 kilowatt hours up to 20,000 kilowatt hours.. Excess over 20,000 kilowatt hours up to 40,000 kilowatt hours__ .007 Excess over 40,000 kilowatt hours up to 80,000 kilowatt hours__ Excess over 80,000 kilowatt hours____ .007 .0066 0066 .0064 Example.-A 75 kilowatt (100 horsepower) motor running 10 hours per day, taking 75 kilowatt (110 horsepower) at times as a maximum, but averaging throughout the day 56 kilowatt (75 horsepower) would in 25 days per month consume current as follows: 56X10X25 14,000 kilowatt hours. The charge for this at the above rates would be as follows: Demand charge, 75 kilowatt, at $1. Energy, 10,000 kilowatt hours, at $0.008_ 4,000 kilowatt hours, at $0.0075--. Total monthly charge... $75.00 80.00 30.00 185.00 Demand rate. Applicable to 24 hours' use of power, and based on monthly maximum demand. Per electric horsepower per annum. $36.00 32.50 30.00 When the demand equals or exceeds 100 horsepower, at the rate of The above was procured and furnished me by Mr. Barton in accordance with the suggestion made by some of the committee, to be included in the record of this hearing. These rates are no higher than many of the rates to consumers in Canada charged by the distributing companies there for power furnished by the Hydro-Electric Commission, whether furnished directly by that commission or through subsidiary distributing companies. The Toronto rates are even higher, and at Bridgeburg the price for quantities of 200 horse power is $39 as against $32.50 in Buffalo (see Mr. Barton's statement). Under the strictest construction, the American companies, producers and distributors, are entitled to a fair return on their investment, including a fair profit. In Canada, theoretically, the Hydro-Electric Commission supplies at cost. On this side it may be true in one sense of the word that there are two "profits"; but it is clearly shown that each company only gets a fair profit on its capital investment and that the cost of such investment in Buffalo for the distributing company is very great, being increased by the obligation to put conduits underground and other expensive requirements. If this expense were not incurred by the distributing company it would have to be by the producing company, and the two profits, so-called, are both only equal to the one profit which would be allowed if the producing company distributed and delivered to the consumer (see statement of Mr. Barton and Judge Kenefick). As a matter of fact, no one is demanding a change of rates. It has been impossible to get 100 consumers of power furnished by the Cataract Power & Conduit Co. to enter a protest. The question of rates is manifestly a political one (see statement of Corporation Attorney Hammond). In any event, all the machinery and power for investigating and regulating rates, as well as the proper jurisdiction thereof, rests with the State of New York and its public-service commission. On the American side the State already has its return in State taxes as well as free electricity for light and power and also for use of the State in the State Reservation at Niagara and the public buildings thereon (see chap. 513, New York Laws, 1892), and to the city of Buffalo and other cities in taxes upon liberal assessments, not only upon the property of the power company but also upon the property of industries attracted by cheap power. The standard 10-hour meter power at a rate which affords a maximum use of 100 horsepower and an average use of 75 horsepower for a month of 250 hours amounts at the city of Niagara Falls to $144.17, as against over eight times that price in Boston, six times that rate in Philadelphia, over four times that rate at Chicago and New York, and nearly four times that rate at Cleveland. At Buffalo the rate for the same amount of power is $185, the extra price over Niagara Falls being on account of the extra cost of transmission to Buffalo, but the Buffalo rates are only a small percentage of rates in other cities not located so as to avail themselves of the Niagara power. The industrial growth of the cities using Niagara power from 1900 to 1905 is shown by the following figures, showing values of manufactured output: Buffalo, from $126,156,839 to $172,115,101; Niagara Falls, from $8,540.184 to $16,915,786; Lockport, from $5,352,669 to $5,807,908; Rochester, from $59,668,959 to $82,747,370; Syracuse, from $26,546,297 to $34.823,751. In 1909 these figures for Niagara Falls had increased to $28,652,000 or about 80 per cent. Similar increases are shown in the other cities. Most of this increase was prior to 1907, since which time the restrictions on importation and the limitations upon this side, fixed by the Burton Act, have kept industrial development in these cities comparatively at a standstill. RATES FOR POWER PRODUCED ON THE CANADIAN SIDE. As already shown, the Canadian Hydro-Electric Commission take the power distributed upon the Canadian side at the bus-bars of the producing plant and pay all the expense of construction, maintenance, and operation of transmission facilities. More than that, the Canadian plants are located upon the property belonging to the Province of Ontario and hold under leases, instead of being independent proprietors, as are the American power companies. As a consideration for this concession, the Canadian companies are supposed to deliver certain quantities to the Canadian commission at cost. However, it has been shown that, considering the transmission by the Niagara Company on this side to the point where the charge is $16 per horsepower per annum, delivered in large quantities under contract, the price delivered in bulk by the producing companies is practically the same on this side as upon the Canadian side. It has also been shown that the cost to the consumer upon the Canadian side argued in favor of American private management as an economy and an advantage to the consumer. As to the price to the consumer on this side of imported power, it goes without saying that the price delivered on this side in bulk could not possibly be the same as the price delivered in bulk at the bus-bars of the producing plant on the Canadian side, for the cost of transmission across the river is expensive, and a fair return upon such cost and of installment and operation must be added (to fix the price of po ver delivered at the American side of the river) to the cost of delivering the same power on the Canadian side, and for power delivered in bulk after further transmission to the city of Niagara Falls or the city of Buffalo a further cost must be added. The figures already given show that the prices prevailing for delivery at the city limits of Buffalo or to the consumer in the city of Buffalo can not be less for power imported from Canada than that which is charged for power produced on this side. The whole discussion and showing with regard to rates shows that the dermand and need is not for lower prices but for more power, and that this demand is for all the power that can be produced upon this side and for all the power that can be imported from the other side, free from prohibition or restriction, up to the full amounts provided in the treaty of 1909. SCENIC BEAUTY PLUS INDUSTRIAL GRANDEUR. Sentimentalists who, without investigation and with misconception. of the facts, blindly worship an exploded theory and echo a mere hue and cry, as do our friends the president and secretary of the civic association, phrase and quote phrases eloquently framed upon the grandeur of the world-renowned Niagara. The theory upon which their campaign was based prior to the Burton Act of 1906-that the scenic grandeur of the falls was in danger by reason of diversions for power-has been exploded by three years of investigations and reports by the United States survey, upon the basis of which provisions of the treaty of 1909 were made. Those expert conclusions have been confirmed by two years of further careful investigation and experience. They conform with the experience and observation of every observer of the falls-that no appreciable change has been caused to the scenic grandeur by power diversions. Nevertheless, by an appeal to prejudice these agitators have brought forth denunciations from the press and have falsely created the impression that the two American companies have made and are now making an "attack" upon Niagara; that because they are seeking to have the treaty provisions observed and confirmed by a new act which shall replace the mere conjectural provisions of the temporary measure, known as the Burton Act of 1906, with an act that shall recognize the limitations considerably, conservatively, and expressly fixed by the treaty, they are asking authority for unlimited diversions with a view to further installation. The cry has been put forth that Niagara is again in danger, although that question has been scientifically passed upon and the provisions necessary to avoid such dangers were fixed and established by the treaty which it is now sought to have enforced. They ignore the fact that the Niagara Falls Power Co. have not made any additional installations since long before the Burton Act was passed and that its installation is for only one-half the capacity to which it has a right under the law and that it only asks here for a small fraction of the increase fixed by the treaty in order properly and economically to operate its installation. They fail to recognize that that company, from the very start, has studiously and consistently and continuously shown its regard for the scenic grandeur of the falls, even at expense and loss to itself, voluntarily incurred before others had raised the question of scenic grandeur. No one has more appreciation or regard for the beauties of Niagara and for their preservation than the officers and stockholders of this company. Its contest here is not antagonistic to the cause of scenic beauty but for another grandeur, the utilization by man and for the benefit of man and communities of the energy which is daily going to waste over the falls; not all that energy, but only such use thereof as is, in fact, and as has been found by scientific investigation to be entirely consistent with the preservation of scenic beauty and of every other public interest. The industrial grandeur which they stand for is not inconsistent with the cause of scenic beauty, but it is one which appeals to the highest sense of beauty, power, and achievement. Mr. H. G. Wells, in Harpers' Weekly of July 21, 1906, said: "The dynamos and turbines of the Niagara Falls Power Co., for example, impressed me far more profoundly than the Cave of the Winds; are, indeed, to my mind, greater and more beautiful than that accidental eddying of air beside a downpour. They are well made visible, thought translated into easy and commanding things. They are clean, noiseless, and starkly powerful. All the clatter and tumult of the early age of machinery is past and gone here; there is no smoke, no coal grit, no dirt at all. The wheel pit into which one descends has an almost cloistered quiet about its softly humming turbines. These are altogether noble masses of machinery, huge, black, slumbering monsters, great sleeping tops that engender irresistible forces in their sleep. They sprang, armed like Minerva, from serene and speculative, foreseeing, and endeavoring brains. First was the word and then these powers. A man goes to and fro quietly in the long clean hall of the dynamos. There is no clangor, no racket. Yet the outer rim of the big generators is spinning at the pace of a hundred thousand miles an hour; the dazzling clean switchboard, with its little handles and levers, is the seat of empire over more power than the strength of a million disciplined, unquestioning men. All these great things are as silent, as wonderfully made, as the heart in a living body, and stouter and stronger than that. 66 * * *: When I thought that these two huge wheel pits of this company are themselves but a little intimation of what can be done in this way, what will be done in this way, my imagination towered above me. I fell into a day dream of the coming power of men and how that power may be used by them. * ** * "For surely the greatness of life is still to come; it is not in such accidents as mountains or the sea. I have seen the splendor of the mountains, sunrise and sunset among them, and the waste immensity of sky and sea. I am not blind because I can see beyond these glories. To me no other thing is credible than that all the natural beauty in the world is only so much material for the imagination and the mind, so many hints and suggestions for art and creation. Whatever is is, but the lure and symbol toward what can be willed and done. Man lives to make in the end he must make, for there will be nothing left for him to do. "And the world he will make, after a thousand years or so. I, at least, can forgive the loss of all the accidental, unmeaning beauty that is going for the sake of the beauty of the fine order and intention that will come. I believe-passionately, as a doubting lover believes in his mistress-in the future of mankind. And so to me it seems altogether well that all the froth and hurry of Niagara at last, all of it, dying into hungry canals of intake, should rise again in light and power, in ordered and equipped and proved and beautiful humanity, in cities and palaces and the emancipated souls and hearts of men. * * Prof. Walter Frewen Lord said in the Toronto Mail and Empire of December 4, 1906: "I went over the Niagara power plant at the Falls the other day. It was a revelation to me. The cataract was wonderful, of course, but it struck me that the work of man in harnessing it was far more wonderful. It seemed to me the greatest thing that was ever attempted-the greatest thing on earth." Rev. J. N. Hallock, D. D., said recently in the Christian Worker and Evangelist: "A new Niagara, harnessed,' but not hushed, with its beauty unmarred and its torrential fury undiminished, now greets the astonished eyes of pilgrims to this picturesque region. The hand of the engineer has left the mighty cataract untouched, while adding to the attractiveness of nature's greatest wonder. Niagara is practically just it is was 10 or 20 years ago, impressive in its combination of picturesque beauty and awe-inspiring grandeur. The rapids and whirlpool still excite the admiring wonderment of men. But there is much more than the Falls and the scenic beauties of the river to interest and charm those who visit this new world Mecca. "I am not sure but that the popular apprehension regarding the possible destruction of the Falls by the water companies has increased the tide of travel in this direction this summer. Thousands of persons no doubt actually believed they were gazing upon the cataract for the last time. Natural Niagara is still a spectacle of beauty and power; industrial Niagara is a wonderful demonstration of man's |