The Commission is the world’s largest publicly owned power enterprise, having assets worth two hundred and fifty million dollars. It is claimed that nowhere else on earth do so many people, spread over so large a territory, enjoy such low-cost electricity as is the case under Ontario “Hydro.” It distributes six hundred and fifty thousand horse-power in electrical energy, and, when all its present projects are in full operation, the daily output will be more than a million horse-power. Canada’s coal bill would be three hundred million dollars a year more if “Hydro” power were produced by fuel from mines. I can make you see in a flash just what all this means to the people. Below the mists of Niagara Falls the river is crossed by the Railway Arch Bridge. Half this bridge is lighted by an American company, and the other half by the current from the Canadian side. The lighting load for the lamps is the same in both sections, yet the cost last year of lighting the Canadian portion was one hundred and ten dollars, while the American company charges at its regular rates totalled two hundred and forty. Now you know why citizens in Ontario go to the polls and vote their municipalities into partnership with “Hydro,” as the Commission is popularly called. The “Hydro” was created because the towns of southern Ontario felt that they were not getting the full benefit of Nature’s great power station at their doors. They then secured a charter from the provincial legislature at Toronto to form a partnership for the purpose of buying power and selling it to themselves. The Ontario Hydro-Electric Commission was created to handle the business. In 1910 it began operations by distributing one thousand horse-power, purchased under contract from a commercial company at Canadian Niagara. Four years later it was selling seventy-seven thousand horse-power, and in 1917 it purchased outright the company from which it had been buying current. Meanwhile, more and more cities and towns were joining the partnership, additional power stations were being bought and built to supply the growing demand, and as consumption rose rates went down. The provincial authorities are now talking about a shortage of power in the near future unless the scheme for building dams and canals along the St. Lawrence is started at once.