ste to
"boom," are ready to grant a liberal franchise to the first firm or
company which offers to supply an electric-lighting system, trusting to
future competition to regulate prices, a resource that must prove of no
avail. Nor are the men in power in our larger cities any wiser. The city
of New York is taking every means to encourage the operation of rival
electric-light companies, and is letting yearly contracts for
street-lighting to the lowest bidder. It is true that competition is
active just now, but it requires no far-seeing eye to discern the
inevitable combination and consolidation among the companies.

Again, not only is competition of this sort sure to fail, but the
attempt to establish it is very harmful. To say nothing of the expense
and waste of wealth which is involved when rival companies are allowed
to stretch their wires and establish their extensive central stations in
the same district, it is everywhere acknowledged that the multiplication
of wires overhead is a crying evil and danger. Are we to double and
treble it, then, by permitting rival companies to place their wires
wherever they please? It is evident that the temporary rivalry which we
obtain in this way is bought at much too great a cost. What is true of
electric street light wires is equally true of the vastly greater
multitude of wires which belong to our rapidly growing system of
domestic lighting, and the telegraph, telephone, and messenger service.
Surely no man knoweth the beginning or the end of the network which is
woven over our heads, and which, besides all the useful wires already
enumerated, is full of "dead" wires, many of them strung by defunct or
irresponsible companies, who would never have been allowed to obstruct
the streets if they had not been "competing" for the business. Can there
be any doubt that it is the height of folly to continue this work, and
that the only rational way of entrusting electric service to
incorporated companies is to permit but a single company to operate in a
district and control prices by some other means than competition?

We have the beginnings of other monopolies in our city economies which
are destined to become much more important, but to which we need only
refer.

Steam for supplying heat and power is beginning to be distributed from
great central stations, through mains laid underground, to all parts of
the surrounding district. The necessity for frequent repairs and
stoppage of leaks