The cold facts about “Hydro” make it easy for Sir Adam to demonstrate its achievements. In his home town of London, for example, where formerly the monthly consumption of electricity averaged less than twenty kilowatt hours for each household, seventy-five kilowatt hours are now used. To an extent formerly undreamed of, power has been put into the homes of the people, and they are using electric appliances in far greater number than persons of similar circumstances in the United States. Electric cooking stoves are being installed in southern Ontario at the rate of one thousand a month. Workingmen’s wives have toasters, electric washers, electric fans, electric heaters, curling irons, and everything else the appliance companies can devise. The Commission is especially proud of the way it has taken electricity out to the farms. Private companies usually find rural extensions too expensive, on account of the long distances between installations, and the relatively small volume of current used. The Commission has now enough rural lines to reach from New York to Atlanta, and it serves as many country homes as there are people living on farms in Rhode Island. Although the rates are higher than in the cities, I find that a farmer can light his house and barns, run an electric stove and household appliances, and a three-horse-power motor besides, for from six to eight dollars a month. The farmers of Ontario can afford to use electricity to run their pumps, separators, churns, milking machines, saw-mills, choppers, and threshers--not because they are richer than other farmers, but because of low-cost power. I have before me a schedule of the rates charged in the twelve largest cities of the province. For domestic service the average net cost ranges from 1.3 cents per kilowatt hour to 2.8 cents per kilowatt hour. The rates vary chiefly with distance. Toronto, ninety miles from Niagara, pays 2.1 cents per kilowatt hour, while Windsor, two hundred and fifty miles to the west, opposite Detroit, Michigan, is charged 2.6 cents. Commercial users, such as stores and office buildings, pay slightly higher rates, while factories are charged from $11.75 to $28.66 per horse-power per year. As with commercial companies, the “Hydro” rates decrease with the amount of power used. For households the secondary or larger-user rate is nowhere more than 1.8 cents, and in most places it is less. In Toronto, the average household electric light bill is less than a dollar and a quarter a month. At Windsor it is less than a dollar and three quarters. In the city of London, Ontario, the household consumption of electricity has under “Hydro” increased more than four hundred per cent. and the average cost has been reduced to less than one fourth of the former charges. CHAPTER XV NIAGARA’S GIANT POWER STATION