. North Carolina and its resources. cheapening of coal and thenecessity for locating on railroad lines in order to avoid the expensivehauling over poor country roads, have led to the greatly increaseduse of steam, and to a corresponding neglect of water powers inmanufacturing enterprises. One after another, even a number ofcorn and flour mills, on the banks of North Carolina streams, havebeen abandoned in favor of the mills established about towns andcities and operated by steam on a larger scale. But in spite of this tendency, many of the water powers nearrailroad lines have been developed to
. North Carolina and its resources. cheapening of coal and thenecessity for locating on railroad lines in order to avoid the expensivehauling over poor country roads, have led to the greatly increaseduse of steam, and to a corresponding neglect of water powers inmanufacturing enterprises. One after another, even a number ofcorn and flour mills, on the banks of North Carolina streams, havebeen abandoned in favor of the mills established about towns andcities and operated by steam on a larger scale. But in spite of this tendency, many of the water powers nearrailroad lines have been developed to their full capacity, as at RockyMount, Haw river, and Rockingham; and Weldon and RoanokeRapids promise soon to be great manufacturing centers. The build-ers of mills at these places have shown their faith by their works, andin reply to a recent inquiry as to the relative merits of water andsteam power for operating cotton mills, these men express a preferencefor water power, if a good one can be had sufiiciently near the Water Powers. 137 This distance of most of the North Carolina powers from railroadtransportation is the factor that has prevented their development;but the transmission of power by electricity promises to do away withthis disadvantage by making it practicable to locate the factories on therailroad lines and still operate them by water power, whether one ortwenty miles away. This new factor is giving a new and greaterimportance to our water powers than they have had before. Itis rendering pra-^^^icable not only the development and use of thehitherto inacces3i/)le large powers, like the Narrows of the Yadkin,but it also rendei3 possible in many cases the concentration of severalsmall water powers into a single factory, though these water powersmay be miles apart on one or more streams. The largest and most important powers in the State are on theRoanoke, Yadkin and Catawba rivers, but on a number of otherstreams, notably on the Cape Fear and its tribu
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