The New Wonder of the World: Buffalo, the Electric City

In the Buffalo Commercial of December 22, 1891, the following interview with Mr. Stafford was printed, under the heading “Buffalo’s Gold Mine:”

“If the richest gold mine in the whole world were discovered in a suburb of Buffalo, what effect do you suppose it would have on our people?” asked Mr. James B. Stafford of a Commercial reporter.

“There would be tremendous excitement, of course,” was the reply.

“There would,” returned Mr. Stafford; “but do you know that the richest gold mine in the world would be a mere bagatelle compared with the wealth that will spring from the Niagara Falls tunnel? Do our people stop to think what it means? It means prosperity for Buffalo beyond the wildest present expectation. I believe I speak entirely within bounds when I say that it will make Buffalo the second greatest city in the whole United States, and that you and I won’t be very old when our city reaches that place. Looking into the immediate future, I will prophesy that we will have a million population within ten years.

“Just look about you and see what electricity has already done for the world, and yet we are scarcely entered up in the Electric Age. We are at the dawn of a new era, and electricity, now in its infancy, will grow and develop until it revolutionizes the world. It will give us power, light, heat, refrigeration. It will do everything for us that steam now does, and here in Buffalo it is going to cost less than water power.”

“What does it cost manufacturers for power now?”

“The water power of the country now in use costs from $16.67 per horse-power per year at Lockport to $56.25 at Manayunk, Pa., while steam costs all the way from $35 to $175 per horse-power per annum.

“When we consider that the entire power going to waste at the Falls is one-seventh of the entire power of the world one can comprehend what an inexhaustible mine of wealth we are on the eve of developing. Already the problem of transmitting electricity long distances without much waste has been solved. Other companies are in the field, and before many years instead of 125,000 horse-power there will probably be a million. Buffalo being the nearest large city to the great cataract, it will be the first to receive the benefits.

“Just let your mind run forward a dozen years. Electricity running through cables from the Falls will act on our city like the warm blood running through a human body, will permeate every part of the city, running 2,000 horse-power engines as easily as the dentist’s drill or the family sewing machine. Every wheel in Buffalo will be eventually turned by electricity. It will light and heat our houses. It will be cheaper than anything else. The impetus that it will give our manufacturing enterprises will be incalculable.

“Add to all this our great natural advantages and no wonder our expectations should be great. We are midway between the great producing regions of the West and the more thickly populated sections of the East, with its continually increasing export trade. What better point could be found for the manufacturing centre of the country? Here all the shipping from the western chain of lakes discharges its cargoes of grain, lumber, ore, etc., reloading with up-cargoes of coal (and all the great coal-carrying transportation corporations have branches that now terminate in this city), laying at the door of the manufacturer the raw material at the lowest possible freight rate, with twenty-six lines of railroads leading from here in every direction (many of them trunk lines), with a canal and waterway to the seaboard giving the manufacturer the finest shipping facilities possible.

“Buffalo already boasts of the largest coal distributing point in the world, the largest sheep and fresh fish market in the world; one of the largest horse markets; the largest grain distributing point in the world; the second largest cattle market in the world; we are destined to be the largest flour milling city in the world, and with our suburban port of Tonawanda we have the largest lumber market in the world.

“In the last ten years we have increased our population 89 per cent., and with this new and wonderful factor that no other city in the world’s history has ever had, it is not a wild statement to make, but one that the present outlook would warrant, that Buffalo and not Chicago will be the second American city.”

ELECTRIC POWER ON THE CANADIAN SIDE.

Col. Albert D. Shaw, formerly U. S. Consul at Montreal, Canada, and later at Manchester, England, is at the head of a company which proposes to produce electricity on the Canadian side of the Niagara River. This company has secured the passage of a bill through the Ontario Parliament permitting the incorporation of a company with a capitalization of $3,000,000, and a privilege of bonding to the extent of $5,000,000, with the object of producing electricity by means of a tunnel upon the Canadian side.

In conversation with a writer for the Philadelphia Press, in April of this year, Col. Shaw said the Canadian company had not been organized to compete with the American company, but rather to supplement and act in concert with it. He explained that as the land on the Canadian side is devoted to park purposes, it cannot be used for the location of manufactories, and therefore the power produced must be transmitted to other points. In this connection he went on to say:

“Such power can certainly be carried to Buffalo. An electrical plant has been established about 16 miles from the city of Rome, N. Y., and the power there furnished is conveyed to Rome with perfectly satisfactory results. Buffalo is only a little more than 20 miles from Niagara, and with the higher voltage which can be obtained there is no doubt that city can be furnished with electric power sufficient to run all the manufactories of New York State were they located there. After our company is organized in harmony with the New York company we shall begin work, and I think can complete it within a year.”

“The water power furnished by the Niagara River above the Falls,” continued Col. Shaw, “is estimated to be equivalent to 3,000,000 horse-power. When we recollect that the Connecticut River at Holyoke only furnishes about 24,000 horse-power, and the river at Minneapolis only 18,000, some idea can be obtained of this enormous power which has hitherto been going to waste. The American company has built a tunnel 8,000 feet long. The entrance to it is a long distance above the Falls, and the exit where the waste water flows into the Niagara River is just below the suspension bridge. This tunnel is capable of furnishing power equivalent to 140,000 horse-power, an amount of power which vastly exceeds anything furnished anywhere else in the world. The Niagara River never runs dry. There never is an appreciable diminution in its body of water. Everywhere else where water power is used manufactories are compelled either to have a steam plant which can be relied upon in dry weather, or else to run the risk of shutting down for lack of power. That can never happen on the banks of the Niagara.”

Col. Shaw went on to speak of the plans of the American company, with which he is familiar. After stating that manufacturers from all parts of the country have been in communication with the American company with a view of locating plants in the city of Buffalo, and that expert engineers estimate that the electric power which can be developed and furnished will be practically illimitable, he said:

“The Canadian company will be able to furnish tremendous voltage whenever wires properly insulated are ready to receive it. The New York capitalists who virtually own the American company, and will be in harmony with the Canadian, are even more enthusiastic than they are in Buffalo. I have talked with a number of them since I have been in the city. They are careful men, not likely to be carried away with false enthusiasm, and who look at such things purely from a commercial point of view. They are of opinion, as I am, and as everybody else is who has made a study of this matter, that the great manufacturing city of the future is to be located upon the bank of the Niagara River, and the time is not far distant when the city of Buffalo will extend from its present site full twenty miles to the north. The number of manufactories which have already decided to move from various other towns, some of them in the far West, to Buffalo, is an indication of what the future will be.

“The power is permanent and is dependent upon no changes of the weather. Moreover, it is cheap power, and will always be sufficient, no matter how greatly any manufacturer may desire to increase his plant. Furthermore, the contiguity of this place to convenient transportation is another temptation to manufacturers. For instance, it has been demonstrated that the grain of the West can be brought there and manufactured into flour at least 10 cents a barrel cheaper than in the great milling cities of the West, and that of itself is a handsome profit.

“Furthermore, transportation charges, such is the relation of Buffalo and its vicinity to water and rail routes, will be cheaper there than at any other manufacturing center in the United States. The raw material can be brought either by the lakes or by rail to the doors of the mill, and the finished product can be sent out by lake, by the Canadian Canal to the St. Lawrence River, by the Erie Canal during the season when water transportation is open, and there are 26 different lines of railway centering there. The manufacturers have been figuring pretty closely. Competition is so great that it is frequently the economies which represent the difference between success and failure, profit and loss. All those of them who have already decided to locate in that vicinity and utilize this great power are of opinion that the saving in expenses will of itself represent a fair profit on the capital invested. Within 20 years it would not be surprising to see a city, or a link of cities practically one, containing 1,000,000 people, and perhaps the largest capital investment in manufacturing in the United States, with perhaps one or two exceptions.

“It is strange that this magnificent power which has been wasted heretofore should not have had earlier development. Several attempts have been made to develop it, but capital has been timid until some of the great financial geniuses of New York City became interested.”

ELECTRICITY IN THE HOUSEHOLD.

It is certain that electricity will be so cheap and plentiful in Buffalo that it will come into general use in the homes of our people. It will be cheaper than gas for light, and coal for heat. It will run the family sewing machine. The electric motor will become a part of every well-ordered household.

The Scientific American, speaking of the new uses of electricity coming in the train of its cheap production, says:

“Domestic life will be attended with many comforts and conveniences. The cook will only need to touch a button, and presto, her electrical stove will be in full operation, the pot will boil, the oven bake, the turkey roast, the pump move, the washing machine turn; while the electric refrigerator will freeze the water, preserve the meats, vegetables, milk, butter, eggs, and other supplies. No coal, no wood, no dust, no dirt, no oil, no gas. The lady of the house will be relieved of care. She presses a button, and every nook and corner of her dwelling glows with cheerful light. Touch another and the electric fire glimmers in every room, diffusing genial warmth. The electric lift takes her up or down stairs. The telephone conveys her orders to market, and distributes her social commands among friends and neighbors.”

ELECTRICITY’S MANIFOLD USES.

In the same article occurs a concise statement of the varied uses to which the incoming low-priced power will be applied in Buffalo. It is as follows:

“Near to Niagara, only twenty-two miles distant, is Buffalo, already a large and prosperous city, the head centre of lake navigation. The simple extension of conductors over the short distance above mentioned will bring to the people of Buffalo direct share in the economic and other advantages of the new and great enterprise. Light, heat and motive power for streets, vehicles, works, shops, factories, stores, churches, dwellings, can be supplied from the dynamos at Niagara more economically, probably, than by any other means. Local steam engines may be dismissed; their occupation, for Buffalo, will be gone. Even the steam fire engines may retire. The electric pump will beat them out of sight.”

PLENTY OF BANKING CAPITAL.

Buffalo is blessed with splendid banking facilities. There are now nineteen banks of deposit in the city with a total capital of nearly five million dollars and a reserve of nearly eleven millions. Five new banks have been started here since the spring of 1891. Our bankers are cautious, conservative business men, and banking business in this city has always been conducted on conservative lines. The solid financiers who control these great barometers of our business life have never invited disaster by loose, speculative methods. Like the arch in the foundation wall of a massive structure, gaining strength from increased weight, has been the prudence of our bankers, and to-day our banking institutions rest upon secure foundation and are ready for the branching out and growth that will come to them with the rapid increase in industrial enterprises resulting from the world’s cheapest power. Prudence has been the watchword of success in the past, and it will continue as the governor in the greater transactions of the greater future.

OUR LOW TAX RATE.

Some facts about Buffalo’s tax rate are fitting at this time. In a carefully written article from the pen of the Hon. Charles F. Bishop, Mayor of Buffalo, and printed in the Sunday Express of April 3, 1892, the following facts are given:

“Property in Buffalo is assessed at much less than its real value, and its tax rate has for many years, for all purposes (State, County and City) except local improvements, averaged about two dollars per hundred on the assessment. At first thought this may seem high, but a careful examination of the reports of other cities shows that the rate elsewhere is generally much higher. In New York it is $1.95; in Chicago $5.00; in Brooklyn $2.57; in Cleveland it is $2.79; in Cincinnati $2.85. And this reasonable rate of taxation is not obtained by rapid increase of our bonded indebtedness except for acquiring valuable property for permanent use, or the extension of great public improvements.

“Indeed, so careful has the increase of indebtedness been guarded that now with an indebtedness of $11,464,531 the city is the owner of real estate valued, in 1890, at $7,804,267 and personal property valued at $6,828,765. Surely this statement shows a due regard for the tax-payers’ interests; and coupled with the fact that Buffalo maintains school facilities as good as those of any city, police and fire departments that for efficiency are unsurpassed, and furnishes a water supply that for purity and cheapness is unequaled, it presents a very well-grounded claim for municipal economy.

“The total of assessments annually shows a gratifying increase of wealth, and of necessity the expenses of the city must also increase with greater population to serve and more extended public improvements to maintain. I am sanguine, however, that in a few years the increase in values will create a noticeable decrease of tax rate.”

OUR CITY WATER.

Buffalo’s source of water supply is the same as the source of our marvelous electric power. It is the Niagara. We get it pure and undefiled, in unlimited quantity, and it is as cheap as it is pure and plentiful. The service is under the control of the city government. Our water rates are cheaper than those in any other large city in the country, manufacturers are given very low special rates, and yet there are several hundred thousand dollars available every year for further extensions to keep pace with the rapid growth of the city, which is constantly pushing out and developing in new sections. The pumping engines and entire plant are first-class in every particular.

Niagara’s water, as is generally known, comes down from the great lakes, and enters the river at the foot of Lake Erie, where Buffalo is located. A mile down stream is an inlet pier through which the water supply for the city is drawn by mammoth pumping engines. Analysis shows that there is no organic matter in the water, and that it is absolutely pure. There is an entire absence of any possibility of its being defiled before it reaches Buffalo. All dredgings from the Buffalo harbor and river, canal and slips must be and are, as provided by stringent law, dumped below the inlet pier.

Thus it will be seen that this great requisite in the health and prosperity of a city is assured in pure and unlimited supply forever.

NATURAL GAS FUEL.

A very large section of the residence portion of Buffalo is supplied with natural gas fuel. It is brought in pipes from Pennsylvania, and also from Canada, and is extensively used for fuel in this city. It is sold to consumers for 25 cents per thousand feet net, and on an average costs no more than coal. The freedom which it gives from the task of handling coal and ashes, and the entire absence of dust and dirt in connection with its use, are greatly appreciated in thousands of Buffalo homes. The Canadian supply gives rich promise of abundant yield, and its principal market is in Buffalo. The source of the Canadian supply is only a few miles from Buffalo. The tremendous extent of the Pennsylvania field is well known.

ELECTRICITY SUPPLANTING STEAM.

As electric power has heretofore been produced, for the most part, by the consumption of coal and evaporation of steam, it has had to compete with steam on disadvantageous terms, as the steam lay one step nearer the base of the power, namely, the fuel.

Coal produced steam; steam, in turn, produced electricity; and as success in any line of manufacture consists largely in the application of economical methods, steam power has been preferred to electric power because it has been cheaper, except, probably, in running small plants with electricity supplied from a central station. In Rochester, N. Y., this is done to a very considerable extent, the idea being that electricity produced by steam can be furnished from a central station to many small factories as cheaply or almost as cheaply as steam power could be produced on a small scale in each one of the factories. The centralization of the power economizes both in machinery and labor. In larger plants, however, it has been found impossible to produce electricity from steam power to compete with steam. Waste in the process, steam being the parent force, prevents a pound of coal from producing as much electric power as steam power. To accomplish such a thing would be like turning base metal into gold.

But with electric power produced by the water power of the Niagara Falls tunnel, steam is dethroned as the King of Force. Electricity takes its place and builds an empire on the banks of the Niagara. And the heart of that empire is Buffalo, and will be forever. The wonderful power has its source near to us; only a few miles of copper wire brings it to our workshops; and here are concentrated shipping facilities unequaled upon the continent. Economy in collecting the raw material, and distributing it again in the shape of manufactured articles, is as important as economy in manufacturing. With cheap power from the Niagara we have the two great economies joined. What a tremendous aggregation of advantages! No wonder conservative business men prophesy a million population for Buffalo within ten years. No wonder the New York Tribune says that our “manifest destiny is evidently to be something tremendous.”

ROOM IN WHICH TO GROW.

When a person undertakes to point out sections of Buffalo that will be most affected by cheap electric power he is confronted with a difficult task. It is certain that the entire manufacturing district will at once respond to the vivifying influence of the electric currents, and that new industrial sections will be opened up at many points. Manufactories will be enlarged, hundreds of new ones will be started, as hundreds of manufacturers from the outside will crowd in to take advantage of the splendid opportunities open to all. Fortunately, we have a great deal of room in which factories may grow and spread, and as the railroads tap a very large portion of the city, there need be no fear of restricted shipping facilities. Although Buffalo has a population of nearly 300,000, its population per acre is only 10.23. St. Louis is 11.51; Cleveland, 16.41; Cincinnati, 18.56; San Francisco, 30.22; Brooklyn, 47.62; New York, 58.87.

These figures are full of suggestion. There is room in Buffalo. And beyond the city line there are thousands of broad acres ready to be used for factories or homes.

There has been a steady, legitimate increase in values in all parts of the city and surrounding country. Particularly in the northern part of the city, to the north of the park, among lands lying in the direction from which the electric currents will flow, there has been a strong movement, and it is probably true that this foreshadows a growth in values that will be startling to many.

Far-seeing men forecast the future by picturing a city that will grow towards the seat of the electric current, followed always by the railroads in the path of progress, until Tonawanda is reached and absorbed; and stretching further still, will finally reach the great cataract itself. Is this too much to expect of a city that holds within its exclusive grasp the two great economies--cheap power, cheap freights! It is well to keep these two things steadily in mind.

But as the city grows in length it will grow in breadth. It will widen out on all sides, and all parts of the city will share in the general prosperity.

THE PHILADELPHIA & READING.

Nothing gives better evidence of the growing importance of Buffalo than recent action of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company. This great company has at Philadelphia and along the Delaware River greater terminal facilities than any other railroad company operating on the Atlantic seaboard. In February, 1892, it obtained control of the Lehigh Valley system, thereby securing a direct route from Buffalo to Philadelphia. The new and more active management saw the tremendous importance of obtaining a foothold in Buffalo, which already holds the key to the traffic of the great lakes, and now stands upon the verge of extraordinary manufacturing development by reason of Niagara’s cheap and unlimited power. Within a comparatively few years Buffalo will be the chief manufacturing center of the country; the possibilities of traffic radiating from this point are boundless. It was a master stroke of President McLeod of the Philadelphia & Reading to establish his railroad securely in Buffalo. It is a well-known fact that the Lehigh Valley has the best terminal facilities of all the railroads centering here. Within the past few years millions have been spent in perfecting them.

Following this stroke with the Lehigh Valley, the Philadelphia & Reading made a traffic contract with the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburg for fifty years, giving still further evidence of belief in Buffalo.

The export business of the Philadelphia & Reading is vast, operating as it does in connection with a line of transatlantic steamers, and this opens up a new line of thought. The impetus given by cheap and plentiful power to manufacturing in old and many new directions in Buffalo will of course be very great, and it is certain that thousands of industries depending upon export trade will flourish here, close to the storehouses of the raw material and of the world’s cheapest power. Numerous avenues to the seaboard are therefore an essential part of the grand plan of our industrial prosperity, and the addition of the Philadelphia & Reading is one of very great importance.

Yet this should always be held in mind--would the Philadelphia & Reading have reached out after Buffalo business if it had not been worth while reaching for? The fact is that we attract great transportation enterprises as the magnet does the needle.

THE UNION IRON WORKS.

During the present summer the Union Iron Works, long unused, are being rebuilt in the southern part of the city, the plans calling for one of the finest plants of the kind in the United States. Part of the plant will be used for the manufacture of steel, and at the beginning a force of about 1,200 men will be employed in this part of the works alone, in three shifts of eight hours each, work being constant night and day all the year ’round.

What stimulus is it that brings this industry into life? Why was it not located at any one of a dozen other points that might be named? Why wasn’t it located close to the iron mines? These and all other collateral questions have already been answered in this volume. We have power cheaper than the cheapest anywhere else, joined with transportation facilities that are unexcelled--the two great industrial economies again, cheap power, cheap freights.

THE COPPER INDUSTRY.

One of the largest aggregations of capital in the world is the Calumet & Hecla Smelting Company. It controls the rich copper mines of Lake Superior with all their inexhaustible stores of wealth. Two years ago the company bought a very large tract of land on the banks of the Niagara within the city limits of Buffalo, and began the construction of an extensive smelting works. The ore is brought here direct from the mines, and here it is reduced and the whole output of the mines distributed from this point. Why did the Calumet & Hecla Company locate in Buffalo? Because of its peerless location as a distributing centre for one thing, and cheap electric power for another.

Not long ago, in Buffalo, a live electric wire fell athwart a lamp post, and in the twinkling of an eye the iron was fused by the current. That was smelting by electricity. The brainy men of the Calumet & Hecla Company knew what they were doing when they located beside Buffalo’s electric power house.

ENORMOUS MANUFACTURING CAPITAL.

The foregoing are simply instances of many new enterprises that have lately been started in Buffalo. The manufacturing establishments of this city tripled during the ten years between 1880 and 1890, and the proportion of increase since 1890 has been much greater than before. It is believed that the capital invested in manufacturing enterprises of all kinds in Buffalo amounts to nearly $100,000,000. What will it be after the full force of Niagara’s lightning has struck us?

AN ETERNAL POWER HOUSE.

The source of Buffalo’s electrical power is the force in running water, but unlike almost every other water power it is never-ceasing. Its supply comes from the hills and watersheds of half a continent. The Niagara can never run dry, can never diminish in volume to make an iota of difference. It is the narrow end of a funnel through which a resistless force must ever flow. It is a force that will always exist. For all time the power of the Niagara developed into electricity will turn the wheels of industry within the great city upon its banks. No emergency steam plants will be needed, as on the banks of many rivers, to supply the place of failing water power. Niagara’s power is eternal.

A GREAT FIELD FOR INVESTORS.

Nowhere on the North American continent is there so grand a field for investment as in Buffalo. Values here have been and are phenomenally low. It has been and is a conservative city. There has never been a boom in Buffalo. There has been increase in values, but no inflation, no boom. Talk of a Buffalo boom has been heard, but the presence of a boom is here denied most emphatically and earnestly. Values in Buffalo and vicinity are lower than in any other progressive city of its size in the country. There has been so much available land that inflation has been checked. A great deal of Buffalo property has changed hands within the past year or two, but at very reasonable figures. Millions will be made within a few years by landholders, and without effort on their part. A dollar planted in the soil of Buffalo today will spring up as two dollars next year.

When a city doubles its population it at the same time quadruples the value of its real estate. It is freely prophesied that Buffalo’s population will be doubled in five years, quadrupled in ten. The cheapest power in the world and unequalled shipping facilities--by railroad, lake and canal--will produce this wonderful metamorphosis.

Cheap power! Cheap freights! A world of wealth is contained in the combination.

Buffalo has a most substantial foundation on which to build a manufacturing metropolis. It is a conservative city, full of careful, cautious business men. It has come along by comparatively slow and always steady progress, taking no forward step until strong and ready for it. Commercial depressions have affected us but little. Panics have avoided us, for panics are like plagues and seize hold where the conditions are unhealthy. We have had neither plagues nor panics; we have a healthy city physically and financially.

Now a new era has dawned. We are about to leap to an eminence undreamed of in years gone by. Strong from the strength of right business living we are equal to the swifter pace of the new order of things. The sublime force of the Niagara is chained and diverted to manufacturing uses. Every wheel in Buffalo will be turned by this marvelous power at far less cost than machinery can be run anywhere else in the wide world. There’s a giant force behind the leap. Cheap power! Cheap freights! These are the talismanic symbols of a mighty greatness.

GREAT IMPORTANCE OF THE LAKE TRAFFIC.

The Review of Reviews in a recent article on the traffic of the Great Lakes, proves the extraordinary importance of this traffic and of Buffalo’s location from a commercial standpoint. It must always be borne in mind that the great bulk of the lake traffic is tributary to Buffalo. The article referred to is as follows:

“Few persons who have not made a personal study of the matter realize the magnitude of the traffic of the Great Lakes. There were over 1,100 more vessels passing through the canal into Duluth, Minnesota, in 1891, than passed through the Suez Canal the year previous. Through the “Soo” Canal at the outlet of Lake Superior there were more than three times as many vessels and nearly a million and three-quarters tons more freight in 1890 than through the Suez Canal during the same year. There is not the same absolute record of vessels passing through the Detroit River as is obtainable for the two points previously mentioned. But an estimate made by Hon. George H. Ely, of Cleveland, shows that in 1889 there were more than 36,000,000 tons of freight carried through the Detroit River. This sum seems large when it is stated by itself, but the real magnitude will perhaps be better appreciated when it is known that this is 10,000,000 tons in excess of the tonnage at all the seaports of the United States for the same year, and 3,000,000 tons in excess of the total arrivals and clearances, both coastwise and foreign, of Liverpool and London combined. The arrivals and clearances of vessels at Chicago for 1890 numbered 21,541, while the corresponding aggregate for New York was but 15,283. The entries and clearances for the entire seaboard of the United States in that year were 37,756, while for the United States ports on the Great Lakes the arrivals and clearances numbered 88,280. The traffic of the Great Lakes in 1891 was 27 per cent of the total traffic of all the railways of the United States for the same year, and if the tonnage carried on the lakes had been carried instead by rail, at the average price per ton per mile, it would have cost, in round numbers, $150,000,000 more than was actually paid for its transportation by water.”

BEAUTIFUL GRAND ISLAND.

Down the Niagara river from Buffalo a few miles the noble stream divides and forms Grand Island. This is Buffalo’s watering-place. Hotels, club-houses, summer residences and public pleasure grounds abound all along the river’s banks on either side of the island, while the rich farming land of the interior is devoted to agriculture. The air of the island is pure, the scenery delightful, and the ride upon the river to and from the city is full of restful charm.

Many pleasure steamers ply between the city and the island resorts, and do a large and remunerative business. But for the great mass of busy people some sort of transit more rapid than steamers is necessary. This want is about to be met. A project has lately ripened to build a bridge from the mainland and run an electric railroad across the bridge and clear around the island, connecting with the street railroad system of the city. Long-headed men foresee that when this is accomplished there will be a quick and large appreciation of land values on the island, and it is certain that within the next few years fortunes will be made in Grand Island lands as well as in those of Buffalo and other sections of the mainland. With the increased demand for manufacturing sites, industrial enterprises will certainly seek that portion of the island nearest to Buffalo and Tonawanda, and the other side, facing Canada, will continue to be occupied by summer resorts, club-houses and residences.

CONCLUSION.

In this little volume an effort has been made to acquaint the reader with the splendid present and the glorious future of Buffalo.

Among the great events in the history of industrial enterprises the turning of Niagara’s water power into electric force is one of the most portentious.

A vast field, teeming with wealth, lies open to our view, and the tremendous possibilities--nay, the certainties--for Buffalo are sharply defined. If one tunnel can be constructed, so can two, or a dozen, or a score. Power will keep pace with the demand for it--power cheaper than any other on the face of the earth--and, as it can be easily transmitted, it will be chiefly used where it can be best used, and that is, where the acme of shipping facilities is found and must always concentrate, in Buffalo.

The thunder of the Niagara will remain where the waters leap, but its swift lightning is Buffalo’s.