of steam prime movers. In many instances it is profitable to carry the main body of the load on the steam power house, and let the water power plants, which have considerable storage behind them, take care of the peaks. This will allow the steam plant to run on a 100 per cent. load factor, thus producing the maximum income from the investment, and under such operation many steam plants can compete successfully with water power plants.

This presents a view-point of which but few of us realize the importance, although one, of which many of you have thought; it is this, that there are many water power developments commercially possible with the use of steam auxiliaries, but there are only a few water powers that can be developed to the maximum capacity of the stream that can be used without steam auxiliary.

The Government has, in one instance, that I know of, shown socialistic ideas in attempting to develop a water power site for commercial purposes. I am very much interested to see how the proposition works out and I can predict failure for any attempt on the part of the Government to develop a water power for the purpose of generating and distributing electricity.

I can readily conceive that, in the hands of men with broad minds and honest motives, the Government could build dams and generate current, but I cannot conceive that success would ever attend the sale and distribution of electric current in a community by the Govern

ment.

H. M. Byllesby & Company, the company which I represent, owns and operates 10 or 12 properties of water power development on the water shed of the Mississippi River. The locations are as follows: Cannon Falls, Minnesota; Mankato, Minnesota; Apple River, Wisconsin; several developments in or near Minneapolis, Minnesota: also an electric lighting and steam heating property at St. Paul, Minne

sota.

On the New River in West Virginia we have developed two water powers, and there are two other water powers which will be developed in the near future.

This installation on the New River is unique in that almost one-half of the entire market for the power developed is to supply electrical energy to coal mines.

Now we have often been led to believe that the further away a water power development was from cheap coal the more profitable it would be, but I can assure you that while these developments on the New River have just been put in operation and we cannot tell you from the actual operation of the plants what the profits will be, yet the signed contracts for power in the Pocahontas coal field will show a return on the investment greater than my company dared to predict in its prospectus.

We are about to develop a large installation on the Caney Fork River in the near future, to supply Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville, Tennessee, with power.

In conjunction with E. W. Clark & Company, we have developed on the Oconee River, in Tennessee, 20,000 h.p. and are now building an additional development of 15,000 h.p.

We are building a 150-mile, 125,000-volt transmission line between Chattanooga and Nashville for the distribution of this power to these two cities, and we have just completed a transmission line into Knoxville, Tenn., and Rome, Ga. By the time this project has reached its full development stage, we will be able to supply electric current to every town and city in three-fourths of the State of Tennessee. The effect of this development alone upon the community has been to cause an enormous interest in the natural resources of the country, and is already causing large manufacturing industries, dependent upon a large supply of current and cheap labor, to open negotiations for the purchase of power.

One of the relics of barbarism that has handicapped a great many water power developments is the fact that the sluicing of logs down a stream is considered by the Government of more importance than the power of the stream. As an example: One of the water power developments which we own, supplying current to Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, was compelled to shut down for several days while logs were sluiced down the river and, while I do not know the exact figures, the loss to generation and sale of power during the time the logs were sluiced down the stream was considerably greater than the value of the logs.

The conservation idea of this state of affairs works backwards. The waste of water in dollars and cents could produce electric current, the income of which would be greater than the logs. On the other hand, by aiding the lumbermen and wasting this water, he was enabled to cut from the public domain, trees that would have been more valuable to posterity than they are to-day, and probably at such time, transportation facilities would not require that an entire river be wasted to carry the logs over a structure primarily erected to save the water of the stream.

In connection with the development which we own and operate at Minneapolis, I point out a peculiar attitude that the Government has adopted, but I am not referring to the present administration. The Government has been building a dam for a great number of years, in fact as long as I can remember.

The method of building this dam would bankrupt an ordinary contractor, but while it is expensive to the Government, the people, especially the laborers who work on the dam, are reaping the benefit of it. The plans of the development have changed a number of times since its conception. The method of developing power from this dam has

66

been necessarily changed, because of the developments of electrical apparatus during the past decade. However, the dam is held as a menace to grasping corporations" by the people, and the various demonstrations that have passed in review indicate that a Government dam near a large city on a big river is the best platform an aspiring candidate can use for political advancement. In the meantime, the development and sale of electric power has gone ahead in spite of this "awful menace," and I can safely say that the demand for power is so great, by the time this dam is completed, the amount of power generated will be a small proportion of the demand.

The Government cannot afford to enter into the sale and distribution of electric current, because it is not equipped to enter into the manufacture and sale of a commodity that must be used at the same instant it is generated.

Electric current is peculiar, in that it is the only commodity that must be used the instant it is generated.

When it comes to building battleships and large buildings that have no limit on their time of completion and cost, the Government can do such work and can do it well. It is not the function of the Government to enter into such a business as the above.

The Government can dig canals and dig them well and it can improve rivers, and the greatest thing that the Government can do, I think you will all agree, is to immediately appoint a commission for the development of the Mississippi River, and its tributaries, and the conservation of its flood waters, to use all the water possible for the manufacture of electric current and to be ready to do the work so that the equipment and the great organization now at work in building the Panama Canal, can be immediately used in this second undertaking, which will probably be of greater benefit to humanity than the Panama Canal. And the humanity item is not alone based upon commercial gain, but it is in the saving of lives and making habitable vast areas of land which are now sparsely peopled with those who are cultivating the land at the risk of their lives.

The people benefited by this work will be the American People, citizens of these United States, and not the world at large.

MR. BURLEIGH: Mr. President, I feel sure that every member of the Convention here assembled feels honored and has sincere pleasure in noticing the attendance at our meetings. of our Past Presidents; and at this time it will be regarded a peculiar pleasure, I feel sure, to have with us one of our old Past Presidents, the honored head of one of the great street railway systems of this city, who, I believe, is just completing forty years of service as a street railway man. I would like, if it is in order at this time, to offer a resolution, expressing

our congratulations over his long service, as well as our sincere hope that God will spare him many, many years longer. I refer to Mr. John M. Roach and ask for a rising vote upon this resolution.

VICE-PRESIDENT HARRIES:- Gentlemen, you have heard the resolution. To many of us this means a great deal. To you of the younger generation, perhaps, it does not mean so much, but as you yourselves become older, you will begin to appreciate those who went before you and trod the way and made it smoother for your footsteps. Those in favor of the resolution will please rise.

(All present then rose.)

VICE-PRESIDENT HARRIES:- Everybody having risen, the resolution is unanimously adopted.

MR. BRUSH - Mr. President and Gentlemen, the manufacturers have gone to considerable trouble (and I am speaking as a railroad man) and expense and have also devoted a great deal of thought to giving us a very elaborate exhibition. I had a little experience this morning in endeavoring to find a certain exhibit, and finally I met a supply man who took me to the exhibit I was looking for. I believe that many of you do not know that there are five halls containing exhibits, the two main wings, with which we are familiar and three other halls about as large as the main halls. It seems that many of you are not familiar with the location of those halls.

VICE-PRESIDENT HARRIES:-To-morrow's program is extremely interesting. We have some fine papers, but without discussion these papers will fall far short of what they are intended to be.

On motion, the meeting then adjourned until Wednesday at 2 o'clock.

9

WEDNESDAY SESSION

OCTOBER 9, 1912.

Vice-President Harries called the Second Session of the Convention to order at 2.15 P. M., in the Blue Room of the Saddle and Sirloin Club.

VICE-PRESIDENT HARRIES:- The first report which we will consider this afternoon is that of the Committee on Education, which was to have been presented at the meeting yesterday. In the absence of the chairman of the Committee, Prof. H. H. Norris of Ithaca, the report will be presented by Prof. Richey.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION

To the American Electric Railway Association:

GENTLEMEN. This committee was appointed in 1907 and the membership, aside from the chairmanship, has been made up of two practical railway men and two teachers interested in railway problems. What really started the educational work of the Association was the suggestion that the apprentice system of the manufacturers should be adapted to and adopted by the electric railways as was already being done by the steam roads. The Committee gathered information and finally formulated an apprentice system for technical graduates which it is expected will be increasingly adopted, in spirit if not in form.

The Committee, almost from the start, had also in mind the boys in the shop from among whom good mechanics, foremen, superintendents, etc., must be produced if at all. After concentrating more or less upon the college boys for a while, until the apprentice course was formulated, the other and just as important and naturally capable class was studied. The result of this study was the proposal of a correspondence course as explained in this and two previous reports. This plan, after being carried to the real launching stage has been held up, only temporarily it is hoped, waiting for the "greasing of the runways and the cutting of the hawsers."

An experimental "run" was made during the year 1910-11 when an instructor gave part of his time to correspondence instruction of twenty-five young apprentice employees of member companies. A full account of this work was given in the report presented last year at Atlantic City. Briefly the work described therein consisted of the following:

1. The selection by each of five companies of five young men who, in the opinion of their employers, would respond to stimulus and di