Page:A History of the Pacific Northwest.djvu/322

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vocate a revival of individual and family, or small group, industrial production as a cure for some of the evils of factory production, then the Pacific Northwest should be among the first regions of the United States to make the experiment.

Northwestern water powers. The actually existing water powers of the Northwest have only begun to be used. These three states with northern California contain, it is estimated, at a minimum 12,979,700, at a maximum 24,701,000 horse power, or nearly one-third of the entire water power of the United States. The Des Chutes of Oregon alone has a capacity of 1,920,000 horse power, and numbers of streams in nearly all portions of the area are susceptible of large development. Up to the present time the sparseness of the population in most sections militates against power development, since the cost of distributing systems prevents the cheap marketing of energy. All of the centres of population are supplied from near-by sources, leaving the vast majority of our water powers untouched. The growth of the population will bring new powers into use constantly, and the rapid growth of towns, together with the development of closely built orcharding communities, makes fresh markets requiring in a number of cases the tapping of new power resources.

External commerce; beginning. The history of the external commerce of the Northwest began, as we have seen, with the efforts of the Hudson's Bay Company's agents to add to the company's profits by