candle-shades sat like cocked hats astride electric bulbs. There is little heat to an electric bulb for the reason that the white-hot wire that gives the light is made to burn in high vacuum, which transmits heat very slowly. The housewife had taken advantage of this fact and from every corner gleamed lights dressed in fancy designs of tissue paper and silk.

"Now we will talk business," said Perkins when supper was over and they had lighted their pipes.

The returned native looked dubious. His New England training had warned him long ago that one cannot expect to get something for nothing, and he felt sure there was a joker in this affair.

"How much do I owe you?" he asked.

"Nothing," said Perkins. "You furnish the water-power with your idle wheel, and I furnish the electric installation. This is only a small plant I have put in, but it gives us enough electricity to go around, with a margin for emergencies. I have taken the liberty of wiring your house and your horse-barn and cow-barn and your barn-yard. Altogether, I suppose you have 30 lights about the place, and during these long winter days you will keep most of them going from 3 to 5 hours a night and 2 or 3 hours in the early morning. If you were in town, those lights would cost you about 12 cents an hour, at the commercial rate of electricity. Say 60 cents a day—eighteen dollars a month. That isn't a very big electric light bill for some people I know in town—and they consider themselves lucky to have the privilege of buying electricity at that rate. Your wheel is running all winter to prevent ice from forming and smashing it. It might just as well be spinning the dynamo.

"If you think it worth while," continued Perkins,—"this $18 worth of light you have on tap night and morning, or any hour of the day,—we will say the account is settled. That is, of course, if you will give me the use of half the electricity that your idle wheel is grinding out with my second-hand dynamo. We have about eight electrical horsepower on our wires, without overloading the machine. Next spring I am going to stock up this place; and I think about the first thing I do, when my dairy is running, will be to put in a milking machine and let electricity do the milking for me. It will also fill my silo, grind my mowing-machine knives, saw my wood, and keep water running in my barn. You will probably want to do the same.

"But what it does for us men in the barn and barn-yard, isn't to be compared to what it does for the women in the house. When my wife wants a hot oven she presses a button. When she wants to put the 'fire' out, she presses another. That's all there is to it. No heat, no smoke, no ashes. The same with ironing—and washing. No oil lamps to fill, no wicks to trim, no chimneys to wash, no kerosene to kick over and start a fire."

"You say the current you have put in my house would cost me about $18 a month, in town."

"Yes, about that. Making electricity from coal costs money."

"What does it cost here?"

"Practically nothing. Your river, that has been running to waste ever since your grandfather gave up making chairs, does the work. There is nothing about a dynamo to wear out, except the bearings, and these can be replaced once every five or ten years for a trifle. The machine needs to be oiled and cared for—fill the oil cups about once in three days. Your water wheel needs the same attention. That's all there is to it. You can figure the cost of your current yourself—just about the cost of the lubricating oil you use—and the cost of the time you give it—about the same time you give to any piece of good machinery, from a sulky plow to a cream separator."

This is a true story. This electric plant, where Perkins furnishes the electric end, and his neighbor the water-power, has been running now for two years, grinding out electricity for the two places twenty-four hours a day. Perkins was not an electrical engineer. He was just a plain intelligent American citizen who found sufficient knowledge in books to enable him to install and operate this plant. Frequently he is away for long periods, but his neighbor (who has lost his original terror of electricity) takes care of the plant. In fact, this farmer has given a lot of study to the thing, through curiosity, until he knows fully as much about it now as his city neighbor.

He had the usual idea, at the start, that a current strong enough to light a 100 candlepower lamp would kick like a mule if a man happened to get behind it. He watched the city man handle bare wires and finally he plucked up courage to do it himself.

It was a 110-volt current, the pressure used in our cities for domestic lighting. The funny part about it was, the farmer could not feel it at all at first. His fingers were calloused and no current could pass through them. Finally he sandpapered his fingers and tried it again. Then he was able to get the "tickle" of 110 volts. It wasn't so deadly after all—about the strength of a weak medical battery, with which every one is familiar. A current of 110 volts cannot do any harm to the human body unless contact is made over a very large surface, which is impossible unless a man goes to a lot of trouble to make such a contact. A current of 220 volts pressure—the pressure used in cities for motors—has a little more "kick" to it, but still is not uncomfortable. When the pressure rises to 500 volts (the pressure used in trolley wires for street cars), it begins to be dangerous. But there is no reason why a farm plant should be over 110 volts, under usual conditions; engineers have decided on this pressure as the best adapted to domestic use, and manufacturers who turn out the numerous electrical devices, such as irons, toasters, massage machines, etc., fit their standard instruments to this voltage.

Farm labor and materials built this crib and stone dam

As to the cost of this co-operative plant—it was in the neighborhood of $200. As we have said, it provided eight electrical horsepower on tap at any hour of the day or night—enough for the two farms, and a surplus for neighbors, if they wished to string lines and make use of it.

The dynamo, a direct-current machine, 110 volts pressure, and what is known in the trade as "compound,"—that is, a machine that maintains a constant pressure automatically and does not require an attendant—was picked up second-hand, through a newspaper "ad" and cost $90. The switchboard, a make-shift affair, not very handsome, but just as serviceable as if it were made of marble, cost less than $25 all told. The transmission wire cost $19 a hundred pounds; it is of copper, and covered with weatherproofed tape. Perkins bought a 50-cent book on house-wiring, and did the wiring himself, the way the book told him to, a simple operation. For fixtures, as we have said, his wife devised fancy shades out of Mexican baskets, tissue paper, and silk, in which are hidden electric globes that glow like fire-flies at the pressing of a button. The lamps themselves are mostly old-style carbon lamps, which can be bought at 16 cents each retail. In his living room and dining room he used the new-style tungsten lamps instead of old-style carbon. These cost 30 cents each. Incandescent lamps are rated for 1,000 hours useful life. The advantage of tungsten lights is that they give three times as much light for the same expenditure of current as carbon lights. This is a big advantage in the city,