Sabetha        Open For Expansion

Modern Sabetha 89 Years Ago

[Taken from the Sunday Magazine — St. Louis Post Dispatch — September 17, 1911]

Almost Every House in Sabetha Uses Electricity and Is Heated by Exhaust Steam From the Municipal Lighting Plant by a System Designed by Mrs. George Edward Johnson, Graduate Engineer, Whose Husband Is Superintendent of Public Utilities

Sabetha, Kan., Sept. 12, 1911.

All the brains in the Adams family are not contained in the pretty head of Maude of that name, the famous actress who has created so many charming women on the stage.  Maude Adams has a niece in Sabetha, Kan., a pleasant village of the plain where they are very much up-to-date in the matter of public utilities, who has assisted in planning a system of heating, lighting and public utility that has made Sabetha the original “steam-heated town”.  This is Mrs. George Edward Johnson, who was Miss Minnie Adams of Chicago before she married the young engineer who has accomplished wonders in this little Kansas town.

Mrs. Johnson is a civil engineer and an expert mechanical draftswoman, and when her husband was employed to build the public utilities plants at Sabetha it was her hand and brain that executed the working plans and estimates.

Sabetha is a wonder in its way.  It is the town that utilizes exhaust steam to do the work that persons in ordinary towns do themselves.  The scheme put into practice there is one which might be used anywhere the people were progressive enough to use it, and might be applied as well in St. Louis, or any other large city, as in this little city of 2100 inhabitants.  But all cities and towns have not such wonderful citizens as Mrs. George Edward Johnson and her talented husband.

Johnson’s idea in a nutshell is:  A municipally owned plant or system of plants to furnish light, power, heat, water and transportation.  All public utility plants to be correlated that energy may be interchanged.  Exhaust steam from power plant to be used to pump water, furnish heat and manufacture ice.

By this time you will have gathered the fact that Sabetha owns its own public utilities plants, and know that exhaust steam is the keynote of their economical conduct.  Johnson, who conceived the idea, says that any city of any size can do likewise and, by the use of a little business diplomacy and some engineering common sense, can furnish its citizens with light, heat, water, power and transportation at little more than the cost of production and make money enough to abolish taxation.

This is an accomplishment that no city or town can afford to ignore, and the work done by Johnson and his clever wife are more than worthy of exploitation.  Together they have served to put Sabetha prominently on the map of civilization.

One of the secrets of the system is diplomacy, says Johnson, in inducting the citizens to work together, and co-operation follows diplomacy when the citizens unite to use the utilities freely.  But it is exhaust steam that does the work.  Keep that in mind.  Exhaust steam, the valuable product that is thrown away, dissipated into the air in communities less favored than Sabetha, is what makes the public utilities of Sabetha profitable.

Some of the things George Edward Johnson has done for Sabetha:  Tax rate six mills on the $100;  electric lighting;  electric power for all house work;  steam heat;  artificial ice in summer;  average cost to consumer, $2 a month.

In Sabetha the people light their homes, stores, barns and garages with electricity.  They wash and iron their clothes with it;  pump water, wash the dishes, and harnessed current churns, plays the pianos, and cleans the carpets.  The hot prairie winds are alleviated with electrical fans, and with the same power water is heated for the bath.  They warm with electricity the incubators that hatch the Sabetha chickens, and with the same heat cook those chickens to feed Sabetha.  Wheat is ground into flour, and corn turned into yellow meal, wood is sawed and garden machinery is operated with the current.

A municipal plant, co-operatively owned, does all this, and exhaust steam from the plant heats the houses in winter, operates the pumps of the municipal water system, and in summer runs an ice plant.

Mr. and Mrs. Johnson have been married nine years and have two sons, George and Edward.  Mrs. Johnson is particularly enthusiastic about what Sabetha has done in the way of public service and lessening the burden that wousework (sic) in ordinary circumstances puts upon women-kind.

“I think all the joy of living is in doing things,”  Mrs. Johnson said, her brown eyes sparkling with enthusiasm.   “To come into a little town like Sabetha was, when we first saw it, and to see that town grow and blossom, as has Sabetha, is one of the most beautiful things in the world to me.  And to know that one has had a part in that development gives more satisfaction, I think, than anything else.  I am prouder of what little I have done for Sabetha than if I had written a popular book, or a great play, painted a picture or become a theatrical star.”

“I’ve really done very little, only helped Edward, but the people of Sabetha are happier and more comfortable, and that makes me happy.  I am not a suffragette.  I think the woman’s place is in the home, but there are a lot of things a woman can do in the home besides keep house.”

“Every woman ought to know some trade or profession, upon which she can fall back when an emergency comes.  If she has children, there is always the chance that something may befall her husband, and if she is prepared to do something worth while, she need not be afraid.”

“Then, too, when the woman can do something that is an aid to her husband, she gets closer to him.  She can enter into his work, and thus have him all the time.  The average woman, who is nothing but a housekeeper, or perhaps a society butterfly, has her husband only when his day’s work is done.  I have Edward all the time, for we work together.  It does not make me less womanly, and it gives me a perfect understanding of his work, his hopes, ambitions and difficulties.”

Facts about Sabetha;  Population, 2100;   homes, 700;  stores and factories, 52;  electric lights 7000;   electric motors 800;  steam-heated houses, 600.

But, because Mrs. Minnie Johnson is an engineer, and draftswoman, and knows all about kilowatts and amperes, theodolites, sextant levers, valves and that sort of thing, one is not to suppose that she is the less womanly.   Slight and only about five feet tall, she is very feminine, and an excellent housekeeper.  Her children adore her, and find her a companion as well as a mother, and she is a leader in Sabetha’s society.

George Edward Johnson is only 30 years old, but he has studied in a hard school, and is mature in his appearance and ideas.   Tall, and lean in the Abraham Lincoln way, his high forehead gives him a learned and scholarly look, which is belied a little by the flashing steel blue eyes and smiling mouth.  He is noticeable unassuming, and it is hard to get him to talk of himself.   He will talk by the day about his plant and work, but little about Johnson.

“Don’t let’s make this yarn ‘too much Johnson,’” he said, with a laugh, when the correspondent persisted in getting his ideas.

“You seem to put me in the class of Columbus, or Watt or Ben Franklin,” he said, his eyes twinkling.  “I am not like any of those men.  Columbus made an egg stand on end.  Watt watched a teakettle boil, and Franklin flew a kite.  All of them got their big idea in some bizarre way, but there is nothing like that about me.  I’m just an engineer”.

“When I was a boy I was put on my own resources, and worked in a foundry in Nebraska City.  There I first got my idea of utilizing exhaust steam.  I saw the steam from the exhaust going to waste, and it worried me.  Under the best modern conditions now only about 20 per cent of the steam is utilized, and in those days less than that was made to work.

“I left the foundry and went into a packing house in Kansas City.  There I evolved practical ideas about exhaust steam, but when I tried to put them into execution, they would not hear of it.  I saw men around me discharged because they had the temerity to have ideas, so I realized that working for somebody else was no place to develop one’s self.

“I saved my money, and then went to the Armour Institute in Chicago, where I took a thorough course in electrical engineering.   After that I worked for a company in St. Joseph a while, and then looked for a place where I would have complete charge, where I could do as I pleased, and try all the experiments I wanted.  Such a place was Sabetha.  The plant had been losing money, and they paid the engineer $80 a month.  I demanded $200 a month, and before three months had passed the plant was clearing money, and has been ever since.   Exhaust steam did it.”

“Now, I am not a philanthropist.   Do not write me up that way, for I want no credit for what I have not got.  I am an engineer, first and most.  I wanted to put into practice the system that has evolved here, for the pure satisfaction of seeing it work.”

“Of course, my work has benefited the people, and I am glad of it.  It has to benefit them or they would not have gone into it, and without the co-operation of the people, I could not have succeeded.   Co-operation is the main thing.  It takes co-operation to make a successful town.  By co-operation  any community can do all that Sabetha has done, and a whole lot more.  By co-operation the people of Sabetha get their lighting, heating and power for about $2 a month, and their taxes are almost nothing.

“St Louis can do what Sabetha has done.   There is nothing in my plan but co-operation, diplomacy and exhaust steam.   St. Louis soon would need no municipal tax if the city would follow my idea.”

 “And get the co-operation was where the diplomacy came in.  Besides being strong for co-operation, I am also a diplomatist, but understand that all that is just by way of being a successful engineer.   When I came here I found two factions.  Every average town in the United States has two factions, and that is what is the matter with them.  I got the two factions to feeling friendly, and that paved the way to the co-operation which was necessary for my municipal plant.”

“After we got the municipal electrical plant doing the utility work of the town my wife and I set out to teach the people to use electricity in their homes.  We got electric fans, cookers and lamps, and electric piano player, electric motor for the washing, electric irons and all the modern electrical household appliances.  We used them, and invited the town to come and see them.”

“The result was that the women wanted them, and made their husbands buy them.  I persuaded the city to buy all electrical appliances at wholesale and sell them to the citizens for just 15 per cent above cost.   That put the things within the reach of all, and thus increased the demand.”

“When I came to Sabetha, the lighting plant had been in operation nine years and showed an annual deficit.  The city tax rate was 25 cents on the $100 valuation.  The lighting plant now clears a profit of $500 to $600 a month, and taxes have been cut to 6 mills on the $100.  In two or three years I hope to see taxes cut out altogether.  I have spent about $9000 on the plant, and the rest has gone to salaries and improvements.”

Johnson plans this winter to introduce electric heating and cooking devices in Sabetha.  He will put them in his own home and hopes by actual demonstration to induce the rest of Sabetha to adopt them.

With brick streets and electric heating, Sabetha will be about as metropolitan as possible, and then my work will be done.”   Johnson said, a bit wistfully, and Mrs. Johnson echoes his sigh.  “It will be time for me to move on.  I get my fun out of experimenting and building.   I could never settle down as the engineer of a finished plant.  That would be too tame for me.  I yet have more ideas that I have not tried out.  They are too big for Sabetha.  I may try them on St. Louis, if they will let me.”

“Would my plan work in St. Louis or any other large city?  Well, I should say so!  I’d rather get hold of St. Louis with a free rein to do all I pleased than to be king of any country.  It would be better than a trip around the world.  Of course the idea would work out.   Co-operation and exhaust steam would revolutionize St. Louis.

Sabetha, a Kansas town of 2100 people owns its electric lighting plant and water works.  By the use of exhaust steam Sabetha has every convenience of a modern city.

 “If I were turned loose in that city, I could have the city acquire the lighting plant and the street car system.  I would make the lighting plant light the whole city, and furnish all the power for the street cars.  I would utilize the exhaust steam to pump the water, make the ice and do all the other things for which power is needed.”

“Of course, in a big city it would take more than one plant, but with all the consumption, it would be just that much more practical and profitable.”

“The secret of it all is to correlate all utility plants, make them work together; get the people to co-operate and use your exhaust steam.  That will make any municipal plant support any city in the world, properly managed.”

Sabetha has 2100 people, and 7100 electric lights, three and one-half lights for each person in town.  No other city or town in the United States can show such a record.  There are 700 families and in more than 600 houses electricity is used for power and light.  Five-hundred homes use the steam heat.

The striking thing about it all is that there are no Socialists in Sabetha.  That is, there are no avowed Socialists, affiliated politically with that party.  While the town in the most advanced Socialistic community in Kansas the citizens do not realize it.  Working steadily and persistently for their own comfort and convenience, the good people unconsciously have evolved Socialism and have not realized it.

They own, co-operatively, a lighting plant that is made to do all the work of the own (sic), that has cut down taxation to a minimum, pays municipal salaries, and will pave the streets;  they obtain all their electrical supplies from the city at little more than cost.  It would be but a short step to include meat and flour, clothing and shoes among the supplies bought at wholesale by the city and sold at cost, yet the mayor, the councilmen, the postmaster and the town marshal indignantly will tell you that they are not Socialists.