John Mason Clarke

“ Except for that slender radical element of the community which proudly avows its willingness to see the Falls wholly developed into power all will agree that if danger is impending to the cataract it is time now that the danger be measured and fully apprehended.
The conservation of Niagara Falls is a question of public morals. Every industrial enterprise of wide scope has as its foundation a moral problem; it can not be simply the producer of great wealth regardless of the rights of others and of the higher claims of community life ”

“ In taxation of the power product, not necessarily for revenue but for protection, seems to me to lie the sole means of control of the problem, the only way of saving our national pride before the bar of the world. ”

“ The attitude of the man who is willing and ready to see Niagara entirely drained for the wealth it would produce, and only a dreary canyon left to speak of its splendid past, is wholly intelligible, or would be except for the potent facts that wealth and happiness and contentment are purely relative and that the natural forces of the world were not created for the use of man. ”

“ The hope lies herein, that the companies, either through mechanical limitations, difficulties of cheap production or cheap transportation to a distant market, or through taxation of their product, may not be able to reach the volume of abstraction which is to seriously involve the splendor of the cataract. In this age of marvels, no present mechanical obstacles will long hold sway; the genius of man will overcome them all. ”

“ Citizens of Niagara Falls who have the cataract daily before the eye have insisted that the loss of water is perceptible, and that such loss is felt in other ways is seen in the now annual gorging of the ice in the American channel at the upper end of Goat Island, which lays bare the American channel, sends all its water to Canada, and which very rarely happened when the depth of the water was normal.
The two active American companies are not going to use any less water than now, but are vigorously increasing their output and building new power houses to meet their growing market. ”

“ There should be a remedy for every public menace. If there is in the American people, especially in the citizens of New York and Ontario, a sturdy purpose to save Niagara, if it is proposed to meet the problem and solve it, it will be found to possess difficulties enough. The working companies are established in their rights and entirely correct in their demeanor toward the state. ”

“ There is widespread power throughout the country about Niagara, in central and western New York and in southern Ontario—not in concentrated and overwhelming manifestations, but power is running away now in many a stream which might be developed and stored without offense to the world and with profit to the community. ”

“ Nothing can be as wrong as mathematics or logic where the premises are wrong; nothing more excusable than the trial forecast for the life of a spectacular natural phenomenon, even though it will be and remain improbable till every factor in play has been given its full share in the process. ”

“ This claim of the higher life, the demands of the finer emotions, the love for the beautiful in nature, express themselves in part in the government protection of natural wonders from defacement and destruction; in organizations created to keep alive this sentiment and extend the aegis of the state over natural glories which belong to mankind rather than to men. No wise man confesses himself devoid of such emotions. ”

“ The three Canadian companies are to be greater consumers than the American. They are the finest, the most magnificent conceptions of hydraulic engineering, and in their ultimate realization rise to proportions which are an expression of the genius that has inspired them. ”

“ States have not the moral right to do as they please with such phenomena. In a final analysis the individual or corporate claim to advantage from such a source is wholly extinguished, howsoever expediency may qualify and adjust the conflicting claims.
Wherein does the danger to Niagara Falls from industrial development lie? Simply in the drawing off of its waters from the river above the cataract, carrying them around the cliff by some other way or discharging them by tunnel into the face of the falls near the base. ”

“ Isham Randolph, of Chicago, advisory engineer for the commissioners, makes, at the request of the board, a report on the 'Further Development of the Niagara River for Power Purposes,' in which he suggests sites for four additional companies to consume in total 29,996 cubic feet of water per second. We may better construe this proposed abstraction as operations under consideration rather than merely as work suggested. If we add the amount to our last figure the result, 88,396 cubic feet per second, leaves the entire American channel as dry as bone. ”

“ The Province of Ontario joined hands in this endeavor and the Queen Victoria Park was once and will be again a beautiful spot, all the more beautiful, the commissioners think, after the installment of the power companies is complete.
The president of the New York Reservation has stated that 800,000 tourists visit the Falls each year. This is a vast number, bringing in an enormous revenue to the place. No other evidence is required to demonstrate how closely the interest of the whole world is focused on Niagara, for these visitors are representatives of every nation. ”

“ Even the claims of posterity, the passing pang that our descendants may not see the mighty cadence of water as our eyes see it, quite relax all hold upon us in view of the fact that after all this may not happen just as represented. ”

“ The heavy bed of tough dolomite limestone at the crest of the falls, which is the occasion of their existence, lies above a thick mass of soft shale which easily caves in under the rebound of the falling waters, and by so doing becomes the chief cause of the breaking down of the crest and of the cataract's retreat. ”

“ They show that even the existing abstraction of water is qualifying the majesty of the Falls and that the contemplated authorized abstraction will carry the work of destruction well toward its finish. No more franchises are likely to be granted by either of the trustee governments. It may be well if these states or the superior government of each should enter into a treaty agreement to insure this result, but the danger-point being so near, in fact constructively passed, protection for Niagara means control of power production. ”

“ As to the crustal movement whose tendency is to spill the waters westward out of the Erie basin, we may observe that the earth's crust is most uneasy and its movements most uncertain. Nearly every place is going either up or down, few are in a state of actual quietude. ”

“ Three if not four of the charters are dead by limitation, one company sold its franchise to another, one is slumbering with an occasional show of life, another is leading a questionable life and two are producing and selling power. ”

“ They are the figures of the engineers themselves. The counter-argument to these statements has been, so far as the writer's experience goes, either incorrect premises or a rather bored smile. Putting aside entirely the merely proposed developments and considering only those actually in process we see how closely we are brought to the dead line for the American cataract.
What are we going to do about it? A small, very small proportion of the community in New York and Ontario is content to let the process continue, even to the extinction of Niagara. ”