Mayor Adams hit the nail pretty squarely on the head when he said that Buffalo’s future greatness rests chiefly upon the fact that this city will, within a very few years, be the greatest converting, or manufacturing, point in North America. The cost of bringing raw materials to her workshops from all Western points is already reduced to a minimum. The Erie Canal will link her mills with the ocean. The unlimited resources of Niagara furnish her with the cheapest power in the world. Her proximity to the coal-fields provides her with fuel for $1.60 to $2.60 per ton. Natural gas for manufacturing purposes is retailed at a little over twenty-seven cents per thousand cubic feet. And, above all, there are sixty millions of people within five hundred miles of her City Hall. It was between 1900 and 1905 when Buffalo really awoke to her unlimited opportunities. It is interesting to compare her growth between those years with that of Pittsburg, one of the most progressive cities in the United States. In that time Pittsburg’s capital increased twenty-two per cent., Buffalo’s forty-six per cent. The number of wage-earners in Pittsburg increased a little over two per cent., while in Buffalo they increased twenty-nine per cent. The value of Pittsburg’s products increased three per cent.; of Buffalo’s, forty-two per cent. These figures show the remarkable rapidity with which Buffalo is overtaking the cities ahead of her in population. [Illustration: A Fleet of Erie Canal Boats--Capacity of Each 150 Tons. The boats on the new canal will be 1000 tons each. ] Because of the waterways at her door, cheap power, and the millions of consumers within a night’s reach of her mills, Buffalo has become the second city in the United States in the production of flour, now ranking next to Minneapolis, and at her present rate of increase she will be the world’s greatest milling centre in another five years. In 1901, she was producing only about half a million barrels of flour; in 1907, her product was over three million barrels, and it is predicted that the output in 1909 will be four millions. Within the last three years Buffalo has become the chief malting city in America. In 1907, her output was ten million bushels as compared with four million in 1900.