the future. In addition to these independent
enterprises, the telephone has unfortunately furnished an opportunity
for stockjobbing schemes on a considerable scale. The years from 1895 to
1905 witnessed the growth of many bubbles of this kind; one group of men
organized not far from two hundred telephone companies. They would
go into selected communities, promise a superior service at half the
current rates, enlist the cooperation of "leading" business men, sell
the stock largely in the city or town to be benefited, make large
profits in the construction of the lines and the sale of equipment--and
then decamp for pastures new. The multitudinous bankruptcies that
followed in the wake of such exploiters at length brought their
activities to an end.

CHAPTER V. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC UTILITIES

The streets of practically all American cities, as they appeared in 1870
and as they appear today, present one of the greatest contrasts in our
industrial development. Fifty years ago only a few flickering gas
lamps lighted the most traveled thoroughfares. Only the most prosperous
business houses and homes had even this expensive illumination; most
obtained their artificial light from the new illuminant known as
kerosene. But it was the mechanism of city transportation that would
have looked the strangest in our eyes. New York City had built
the world's first horse-car line in 1832, and since that year this
peculiarly American contrivance has had the most extended development.
In 1870, indeed, practically every city of any importance had one
or more railways of this type. New York possessed thirty different
companies, each operating an independent system. In Philadelphia,
Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco the growth of urban transportation
had been equally haphazard. The idea of combining the several street
railways into one comprehensive corporation had apparently occurred to
no one. The passengers, in their peregrinations through the city,
had frequently to pay three or four fares; competition was thus the
universal rule. The mechanical equipment similarly represented a
primitive state of organization. Horses and mules, in many cases hideous
physical specimens of their breeds, furnished the motive power. The
cars were little "bobtailed" receptacles, usually badly painted and more
often than not in a desperate state of disrepair. In many cities the
driver presided as a solitary autocrat; the passengers on entrance
dep