be increased to 200,000 by building storage
reservoirs.

A dam just begun at the rapids of the Mississippi River at Keokuk, Iowa,
will, when completed, furnish 200,000 horse-power. Niagara is producing
56,000 horse-power on the United States side. The Muscle Shoals Falls
rapids in the Tennessee River is furnishing 188,000 horse-power.
Illinois will greatly increase its possibilities for offering cheap
power to factories, when the Lakes to Gulf Canal with 173,000,000
horse-power worth $12,750,000 yearly, and the Chicago Drainage or
Sanitary Canal, which has nearly 60,000 horse-power, are complete. Both
of these projects were undertaken by the state.

In California 250,000 horse-power is now in operation, and 5,000,000
horse-power might easily be developed in that state alone, which at the
price of coal would be worth a billion dollars a year.

New England has the oldest system of water-power control, because before
the era of steam it was the chief manufacturing region of the country.
The Merrimac, flowing through New Hampshire and Massachusetts, is the
most carefully conserved river in the world, and Governor Dingley of
Maine said that the water-power of Maine is equal to the working energy
of 13,000,000 men.

The money value is counted at twenty dollars a year per horse power, but
it frequently brings as high as one hundred or even one hundred and
fifty dollars a year in a good manufacturing region, so that the value
of our water-power facilities can hardly be computed.

An ideal picture of the harmonious development of our water resources
for all purposes is one that is not too difficult to realize. It is the
ideal that should be always before us in the improvement of our
waterways, and we should bear in mind that although the expense will be
heavy, it will not cost more than one-tenth as much to improve all the
important waterways as to equip the railways to carry the traffic they
will be called on to carry in the next ten years; and also that in the
past, for every dollar that has been spent on waterways, almost
twenty-five dollars has been spent on railways. The railways are a great
and important part of our national development, but the waterways should
not be neglected. Rather, the two should be so harmonized and adjusted
as to make one great commercial system that will furnish cheap and
abundant transportation for all our commerce.

The most complete plan for conserving our waters is as follows: First,
bu