water a minute, falling ten
feet, will supply the average farm with all the conveniences of
electricity. This is a very modest creek--the kind of brook or creek
that is ignored by the man who would think time well spent in putting
in a week capturing a wild horse, if a miracle should send such a
beast within reach. And the task of harnessing and breaking this
water-horsepower is much more simple and less dangerous than the task
of breaking a colt to harness.

PART I

WATER-POWER

ELECTRICITY FOR THE FARM

CHAPTER I

A WORKING PLANT

The "agriculturist"--An old chair factory--A neighbor's
home-coming--The idle wheel in commission again--Light, heat and
power for nothing--Advantages of electricity.

Let us take an actual instance of one man who did go ahead and find
out by experience just how intricate and just how simple a thing
electricity from farm water-power is. This man's name was Perkins, or,
we will call him that, in relating this story.

Perkins was what some people call, not a farmer, but an
"agriculturist,"--that is, he was a back-to-the-land man. He had been
born and raised on a farm. He knew that you must harness a horse on
the left side, milk a cow on the right, that wagon nuts tighten the
way the wheel rims, and that a fresh egg will not float.

He had a farm that would grow enough clover to fill the average dairy
if he fed it lime; he had a boy coming to school age; and both he and
his wife wanted to get back to the country. They had their little
savings, and they wanted, first of all, to take a vacation, getting
acquainted with their farm. They hadn't taken a vacation in fifteen
years.

He moved in, late in the summer, and started out to get acquainted
with his neighbors, as well as his land. This was in the New England
hills. Water courses cut through everywhere. In regard to its
bountiful water supply, the neighborhood had much in common with all
the states east of the Mississippi, along the Atlantic seaboard, in
the lake region of the central west, and in the Pacific States. With
this difference; the water courses in his neighborhood had once been
of economic importance.

A mountain river flowed down his valley. Up and down the valley one
met ramshackle mills, fallen into decay. Many years ago before
railroads came, before it was easy to haul coal from place to place
to make steam, these little mills were centers of thriving industries,
which depended on t