A comprehensive study of the problem must make irresistible the conclusions that --
        a. Electric cooking is a luxury for a limited few for whom reduced rates – except for quantity used – can not be justified in social justice and nondiscrimination to all consumers.
        b. Electric heating of houses would be a gross waste rather than a conservation of fuel resources and so prohibitive in cost to users as to be beyond all consideration.

Therefore gas and not electricity must be depended upon for the cooking and house-heating service of the urban public for the future and the manufactured-gas industry must meet this increasing public- service obligation.

The possibilities of hydroelectric power are greatly overrated by the public generally. Hydroelectric power is not of itself, and under all conditions, even when the water power is widely available, more economical and cheaper than steam power. Water-power development can not, therefore, substantially change the electric cost situation.




A week's series of 21 meals, all of different menus, each for five people, were cooked with electricity. Exactly the same meals were then cooked with manufactured gas. The total weekly fuel consumptions for the 21 meals were as follows:^[7]




Taking the average coal consumption – allowing for
transmission losses and low load factor conditions at
4 pounds to the kilowatt hour as delivered at the
consumer's appliance – the electric

On the basis of complete gasification and
40,000 cubic feet of manufactured gas to the ton of coal,
or 20 cubic feet of gas to the pound of coal,

Therefore about 6 pounds of coal would be required for electric cooking to 1 pound for manufactured-gas cooking.

The effect of the general use of electricity for cooking and heating on the Nation's fuel problem is shown in the following:


Total coal required to generate electricity for
cooking and heating service to 6 million homes

Total coal required to make manufactured gas
for heating service to 6 million homes in the

Coal now used by all domestic consumers of coal

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^[6] For further discussion see Salient Features of Electric Cooking, Electric Hot-Water Heating and Electric House Heating, by Samual S. Wyer, Columbus, Ohio, 31 pp.

^[7] Department of Home Economics, University of Washington, reported in the Journal of Home Economics, February, 1923, pp. 71 to 80.
 



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