Popularising Electricity

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 42, 2 May 1930, Page 22

Popularising Electricity

Canada’s Forward Move A FORWARD move is being made by the Ontario Government, Canada, to popularise the use of electricity in rural. areas. Bills. have been introduced to inaugurate a system of loans to farmers to pay for costs of installation and equipment, and further to lessen service charges. The Public Treasury is asked to allot a sum of some £5000 for the exclusive use of loans to farmerowners, which are in no one case to exceed the equivalent of £500, and to be repayable over a period of twenty years. The power will be brought to the lane or road nearest the farmer’s ‘residence. The Province system is a rapidly-growing one, and the scheme, which offers the farmer or rural resident the means of availing himself of electric power is generous, and one that should enable him to enjoy the full benefit of elec‘rie power for both farm and household purposes. The advances will bear only a very low rate of interest, and are, necessarily, extended to only those who are assessed as owners of properties. Altogether, it is a progressive, safe move in the cause of electricity, which carries as much or even more amenities to the country-dwellers as to the towns-people, involving no hardship, but conferring immeasurable benefit. Another bill to come before the same government seeks to set a maximum charge in rural districts (and here is where we in this country would like to emulate it) at about the equivalent of 10/6 per month. Rural lines, as we all know, are expensive to install, but it is only by one and all availing themselves of this almost magical labour-saving | power, that the individual, as well as the majority, can hope to benefit, _In this country we have the same advantages. The hydro-electric scheme ‘is state-owned and _ stateaided, by means of loans to the various Power Boards throughout the Dominion, and in no niggardly way. It is for the people,: themselves, to decide how far and in what way they will take advantage of such State aid, and the marvellous benefits that electricity is now bringing not only to the doors of towns-people, but to those of rural homes, to the milking sheds and factories alike,