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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 3, 1904)
IIP latent census bulletin Is de voted to ' Central Electric IJght and Power Stations," for the year 1902. In transmitting the report to tha Department of Commerce, the statistician says: "At the time of the enumeration there were (In this country) 3,tj20 central electric stations in operation. The cost of their construction and equipment amounted to $004,740,352. The gross income for the year was reported at $S5,700,605, and the total ex penses at $iiR,0Sl,375. These stations fur nished employment to 23,330 wage earners, who received $11,933,112 ns wages during the year. The power plant equipment con sisted of 5,930 steam engines, with 1,379. Ml Indicated horse power, and 1,390 water whec's with a stated horse power of 1,624,980. A noteworthy feature of the de velopment of this Industry has been the Installation of plants operated under tha control of municipalities. There were S15 of these plants constructed and equipment Was reported at $22,020,473. They gave em ployment to 2,467 wage earner and paid $1,422,341 in wages." Onllonk for the Kerr Year. In the course of an artlclo on the elec trical progress made In 1903 and the prom ise for 1304, Thomas Commerford Martin, dftor of the Electrical World, says: "New electric lights have been added to thoso now familiar. Stores and streets are shining with light of vacuum tubes, In which noth ing Is consumed but the current. The es tablished forms are challenged by new comers that threaten to oust them from a part of the field. "The remarkable successes In electrical traction In 1903 have set one seal of dis tinction upon" the old year . On the Zossen road In Germany men have traveled in elec tric cars at a speed of over 130 miles an hour, which means a capability of hurling us comfortably from New York to Chicago In eight hours. It may not pay commer cially in our generation, but the New York Central has made up Its mind it will pay right now to change from steam to elec tricity. "The saddest of all Is the revelation made by the Chicago automatic telephone exchange that we have got to say 'goodby' to the polite and timid young 'hello' girls at central." Traffic on Interurban. Lines. The Indianapolis intcrurban roads having taken a large part of the local passenger traffic from the steam roads running out of the city with which they come In com petition, are now making heavy Inroads In the local freight and express business. An Investigation reveals the fact that practically all the commission house busi ness and a large part of the lighter freight shipments made In less than carload lots, to points within thirty or forty miles of Indianapolis, have already gone to the Interurban roads. The manager of the freight and express department of one of the larger Interur ban companies doing business In and out of Indianapolis, after a careful estimate, places the total commercial value of the Interurban shipments out of that city at $500,000 a month, and estimates the gross receipts for hauling this freight and ex press at $12,000 to $15,000 a month. He estimates the total commercial value of shipments made out of Indianapolis during the year Just closing at over $5,000,000, and the gross earnings of the Interurban, for handling this freight, at about $140,000 to $1W.OOO. It is exceedingly difficult to get at net and gross receipts, as each of the Inter urban companies seem to have a different basis for figuring expenses and earnings in handling this business. One or two of the companies make the assertion that there is no money In the business, as It is handled at this time. Charles 1j. Henry of the Indianapolis A Cincinnati Traction company, and the Indianapolis & Shclby vllle line, before the Hoard of l'ubllc Works made this statement. On the other hand. It Is Interesting to learn, through trustworthy sources, that the Indianapolis & Northwestern, the Indiana Union Traction and Its Indianapo lis Northern, that handle all freight ship ments at night, figure that in so doing that are utilising energy that otherwise wor.'d not be used. It Is necessary to keep the power plants In operation in al most all departments every hour, day and night. The Union Traction company, for one, does most of its freight business dur ing those hours when there is no passenger traffic, or It Is lightest. Whatever may be the value of this rap Idly developing department of interurban business, as viewed by the compnnles, at least three things are manifest. The first of theso Is that the lnterurbans are tak ing small local shipments away from the steam mads, the second Is that the new service Is Increasing the trade of In dianapolis commission und wholesale mer chants, and the third is that the service Is developing new trade for Indianapolis and Is already taking much business away from Chicago. Still other things, aro evident. They are that the interurban companies need their own freight houses; that when freight houses arc provided business will Increase still more rapidly; that, as the companies at present are handling the freight busi nesswhich they choose to term "express" business they nre Imposing, to a certain extent, upon the city of Indianapolis In using the streets for loading and unloading freight. The Indiana Union Traction company, which Is doing probably 40 to 45 per rent of all the Interurban business in and out of Indianapolis, is already at work building and furnishing freight depots In all of the cities along Its line, with the exception of Indianapolis. New freight depots have re cently been opened In Marlon, Muncle, Kl wood, Alexandria and the smaller towns. At Anderson a temporary depot Is now used. It will be replaced by a large, per manent one next year. It Is known that the company fully realizes the necessity of having a depot in this city and has been figuring on several desirable sites. Almost all the companies now doing a freight business In and out of the city are handling it from their passenger stations. As a rule, shippers load into the cars and receive shipments from them. This means tho blocking of streets and makes neces sary doing practically nil the business in the city's streets. Indianapolis News. Badlam Cheaper. . Dealers complain that $3,750,000 an ounce, widely quoted as the price of radium, is too high. They say it may be Impossible to buy an ounce at that Bum, because no one possesses an ounce. The present price is 5 guineas for five milligrams, .that is $143,835 an ounce, in France, England and Austria. Chemists are working wherever they think it. possible to extract a milli gram. Prof. Ilimstedt of Freiburg has made an interesting discovery. Ills ex periments have proved that all the products of water and petroleum sources yield a heavy specific gas, which closely resembles and is probably identical with the emana tion of radium, from which he concludes that a very large number of bodies ure Imbued with a quality emitting a kind of Becquerel rays. Fasillnir Klectrlcal Flad. Discoveries are now coming thick and fast. One which unfortunately has e:icaped is puzzling a well known electrical Investi gator. He was experimenting a few weeks ago with a large vacuum tube containing, as he supposed, vapor mercury, such ns is used In nn electric glow light. Ho con nected the battery and obtained a brilliant white light. He disconnected the buttery and to his astonishment the tube continued to shine as bright as ever. The wonder ful light continued for ten das, the ex perimenter all the time trying to solve tho mystery. Then the whole connection was accidentally broken and nil attempts thus far to reproduce it have failed. Kleetrlclty Instead of Coal. Owing to the Increase In the price, of coal during the last few years Mr. Thor mann, a prominent Swiss engineer, wished to find out whether It would not be nn advantage to use electrical energy, fur nished by hydraulic plants, over the whole of the railroad system of Switzerland. After Investigating the subject he pub lished a repoit which has awakened con siderable Intercut and will no doubt bring about some practical remits in this direc tion. He finds that tho substitution of electricity for steam on the railroads Is quite practicable and has many advan tage.', nlttough It will not bring about any considerable reduction in the cost of oper ating the road'. The five main railroads In Switzerland require over 30,000-horsij power daily. In order to organiza a complete elec trical service It will be necessary to ob tain about C0,0tl0-ho:se power In the shnpo of the alternating current of high tension, not counting the rererve supply, which is Indispensable. Not taking into account tho conrlderatle number of falls which are not utilized In the country, thero exist already twenty-one large hydraulic plants which can give a total of Mi.OOO-horso power. These Include the plant of Slel, near I,ln Bledl, wlilcli has a capacity of 20,000-horse power; the Laufcnbiug plant, on the Ilhine, giving also JO.flOO-horse power; and five others, giving each 6,000-horse power. He enumerates twenty-one plants, which will be more than sufficient to supply the energy for the Swiss railroads. The cost of chang ing over the system would of course be con siderable. It is to be noted, however, that the adcp'.lon of the lectilcal system would have the great advantage of doing away with the present coniumptlon of coal, which Is now Imported, und that tho use of hydraulic energy would be of great tenefit In developing pevinl branches of manufacturing. Tho publication of Mr. Thormann'a report aroused onslderablo at tention In different quarters, and already one of the railroad companies haB applied to tho government for an authorisation to use electric trains on a trial stretch of road twelve miles long. locomotives vs. Klectrte Motors. Whether the electric suburban railways will deprive the steam railways of their suburban traffic is a much disputed ques tion whfcuh .the RaHway World 4 disoosed to answer in tho negative. In England the steam Ifhrs have adopted to some extent electric railway methods for handling su burban traffic. They thus get more fre quent trains. Hut there Is this In favor of the steam railways, that In proportion as the passengers and freight traffic Increase the roadbed equipment and facilities ftr handling traffic on the electric lines must increase in cost till the electric line has no advantage In point of cheapness over the steam line. The distances traveled by com muters are Increasing and they demand convenient terminal service and comfort able accommodations a demand which only the steam roads at present satisfy. "High speed for distances of twenty miles," says the World, "cannot be ex pected from the facilities the electric lines now havt." The latter follow the crooks and turns and ups and downs of the streets and country roads. Their terminals are the street corners and cross roads. Within ten or fifteen miles of Ihe eltv tha trolley may gain supremacy, but outsMe that radius tho future, It Is claimed, is with the railroads. "No apprehensions ate be.'nir felt." says the World, "by the steam rail way interests at large over the rapid ex tension of electric traction. It has Its place nnd this It will fill without serious Injury to the steam railroads. In fact, so far from being a competitor of tho railroad the trolley is likely to Increase materially tha revenues of the steam rail transportation, agencies. Thin It will do Indirectly, I ut notio the less effectively, by cultivating Ihn habit of travel which grows by what It feeds upon. The first steps into a new habit are always the most difficult, nnd we) nil know from experience that peoplo who would never, In the first Instance, patron ize the railroad aro led to take long Jour neys by the habits of travel acquired on tho electric car." Theory of Klertrolynln. A recent number of the Elect ro-Chemlst and Metallurgist contains nn artlclo by Mr. W. t". I. Whothnm on the present position of the theory of electrolysis. The Investigations which led up to the theory of electrolytic dissociation and the modern convectlve views of electrolysis are traced, and It Is clearly shown that a vast number of Important observations nre easily ex plained by the modern views. As the au thor points out, experiments on the com parison of the electricnl and the osmotic values of ionization are of little use from the point of view of the controversialist seeking arguments for or against tho lonlo dissociation theory. The deviations be tween the two values are, however, In most cases easily explainable by a consideration of the Interlonle. forces, which probably exert an effect even at dilutions at which tho intermodular forces aro negligible, and, further, of the complexions which nre so often formed in solution. The Uses of Adversity Senator Joseph W. Bailey of Texas was in New York for Homo tlrno Inst summer on legal business. While he was thero he be came acquainted with many of the men of big affairs. "I nm convinced," tho senator Bald on bis return to Washington, "that It Is more fun to bo a poor man than a rich one. "Now, there may come times when T want $.W0 and It worries me to get It, but I can tell you that It doesn't worry me half so much an It worries- a multi-mil-llonalre to get a million or two when ha needs ready money. "He takes his story to a banker. The banker says, 'List me your securities.' Then the banker picks out the choice ones, makes a call loan and as soon as he sees tho mil lionaire is hard pressed again culls the loan and grabs the securities. "You can't tell me that the poor man Is not the happier of the two." Saturday Evening Tost. Wisdom of Mother Goose Jack and Jill went up the hill to get a pall of water. "That Just shows the cussedness of rate," he said, as they waited for tho ambulance. "If we had gono for beer, there would probably have been a cop on the corner to see we got it safely." Badly, they pondered on the trials of tha straight and narrow path. Old Mother Hubbard had gone to the cupboard to get her poor doggie a bone. "It doesn't matter," remarked the ca nine politely, "I heard that young man say be was going to call on your daughter again tonight." Here we see the true history of how the catastrophe was averted. New York Bun.