result in the Pearl Street station has fully demonstrated the
correctness of our estimate thus made in advance. As regards our getting
only three lights per horse-power, our station has now been running
three months, without stopping a moment, day or night, and we invariably
get over six lamps per horse-power, or substantially the same as we do
in our isolated plants. We are now lighting one hundred and ninety-three
buildings, wired for forty-four hundred lamps, of which about two-thirds
are in constant use, and we are adding additional houses and lamps
daily. These figures can be verified at the office of the Board of
Underwriters, where certificates with full details permitting the use of
our light are filed by their own inspector. To light these lamps we run
from one to three dynamos, according to the lamps in use at any given
time, and we shall start additional dynamos as fast as we can connect
more buildings. Neither as regards the loss due to resistance, nor as
regards the number of lamps per horse-power, is there the slightest
trouble or disappointment on the part of our company, and your
correspondent is entirely in error is assuming that there is. Let me
suggest that if 'Investigator' really wishes to investigate, and is
competent and willing to learn the exact facts, he can do so at this
office, where there is no mystery of concealment, but, on the contrary,
a strong desire to communicate facts to intelligent inquirers. Such
a method of investigating must certainly be more satisfactory to one
honestly seeking knowledge than that of first assuming an error as the
basis of a question, and then demanding an explanation.

"Yours very truly,

"S. B. EATON, President."

Viewed from the standpoint of over twenty-seven years later, the wisdom
and necessity of answering anonymous newspaper letters of this kind
might be deemed questionable, but it must be remembered that, although
the Pearl Street station was working successfully, and Edison's
comprehensive plans were abundantly vindicated, the enterprise
was absolutely new and only just stepping on the very threshold of
commercial exploitation. To enter in and possess the land required the
confidence of capital and the general public. Hence it was necessary to
maintain a constant vigilance to defeat the insidious attacks of carping
critics and others who would attempt to injure the Edison system by
misleading statements.

It will be interesting to the modern elec