SECOND SESSION

President Insull called the meeting to order at three o'clock, and announced the first business to be a paper on public lighting with relation to public ownership or control, by Mr. Alex Dow, of Detroit, Mich.

Mr. Dow presented the following paper:

PUBLIC LIGHTING IN RELATION TO PUBLIC OWNERSHIP AND OPERATION

This paper is written to set before the association a proposed policy. It is not a new policy in its parts; neither is it an untried policy. It is applicable immediately to public lighting; that is to say, to the lighting of streets and public places under contract with, or on account of, a municipality. Ultimately, its application may be more extensive.

It is the belief of many members that the National Electric Light Association should formulate and publish a well-considered method of dealing with this business. While local conditions differ, there is no local difference in the principles that should govern electric-lighting companies in their dealings with municipalities and municipalities in their dealings with electric-lighting companies. An authoritative statement of these principles is needed. A statement by the association may be accepted in the first place only by the electric-lighting companies, but if the principles so stated are intrinsically correct, their acceptance by the municipalities must follow. No city government will persist in a course that is plainly inequitable. City governments have in certain cases acted inequitably in the matter of public lighting, but their action has not been plainly inequitable. In such cases, principles have been obscured by details or by personalities, or have been distinctly understood only by the

parties on both sides of the case. The public does not seek to be served at the expense of the individual. Public opinion may at times be biased, but it intends. and endeavors to be just; and under our scheme of government public opinion is the final authority, and an appeal to public opinion is the ultimate means of redress for any grievance.

The advocates of municipal ownership have long recognized the value of public opinion, and have presented their case, both to the people of the country at large and to the citizens of selected municipalities, through magazine articles, newspaper discussions and addresses to public gatherings. Some of our members have met these arguments in kind, and have confutedextravagant statements by the presentation of facts. But the man who is plainly arguing in his own interest is handicapped in a debate before a non-judicial tribunal as against those who claim to be disinterested. And it is not to be denied that the arguments which have had most influence on public opinion in this matter, are those of theorists, who certainly believe that they are doing the world a service, who are usually misinformed, always impracticable, but thoroughly in earnest.

A declaration of principles by this association, and the recommendation to its members of a policy based on those principles, would have greater weight with the public than the statements of individual companies, and would be accepted as authoritative over a wider area. But even if not accepted by the public, its immediate acceptance by our own members will be useful. That each member must act for himself is a consequence of the conditions of our business; but that all should act on similar lines is possible and is desirable. Each of us looks to other cities than his

own for light on problems that are new to him. Each of us, by a successful solution of any problems, benefits the industry at large, and on the other hand, he who fails to appreciate and to properly deal with such a problem as this, injures, by his failure, not only himself, but all of us. Therefore it is well that we should agree on general principles, and that we should advise with one another on special cases.

Let me make this general statement more specific. The member of this association who, by good service, by close figuring of expenses and of profits, and by clear statements and logical arguments, convinces the authorities of his own city that it is to their interest to leave their public lighting in his care has done all of us a service. The member who, on the other hand, fails to recognize the drift of opinion among his fellow citizens, who tries to convince them that unsteady and uncertain lights are worth a high price, who depends for the retention of his city-lighting contract on an appeal to the technicalities of his state law, or to the pockets of the venal members of his local Board of Aldermen, and who thereby brings about the erection of a municipally-owned electric-lighting plant and the publication of the bare running costs of that plant in parallel columns to the prices which he wished to charge, the member who does these things that he ought not to do, and leaves undone those other things that he ought to have done, is a detriment to the industry throughout the entire Union.

I have indicated why I believe that a declaration of principles and of policy is desirable. The principles to be declared will need little discussion, but the policy that to me appears best may, when examined by others, appear to require amendment, or even radical change. It is offered to you for consideration in the

belief that it is logical and that it is practical; but as a proposition for discussion and amendment, rather than as a perfected plan.

A CHAPTER OF ELECTRIC-LIGHT HISTORY

In the history of street lighting by electricity, no chapter contains more profitable matter for study or for illustration of general principles than that which contains the record of the city of Detroit. That city was one of the first to use electric lights on its streets. It began in 1883 with twenty-two arcs, and in 1884 abandoned all other street lights. This street-lighting business was believed by those who first engaged in it to be a monopoly secured by patent rights; they found their mistake after much money had been invested under that belief; competition ensued; then consolidation, and finally municipalization of the service. shall find it convenient to refer to Detroit for more than one modern instance.

I

In February, 1896, the city of Detroit owned 1,500 arc lamps and was operating 1,492 of these in the work of street lighting. In the same month the successor of the Brush Electric Light Company, which installed the original twenty-two lamps in 1883, and which, until 1890, lighted the streets under contract, owned 1,049 arc lamps, and used in private lighting 433 of that number. Another company, organized in 1890 to compete with the Brush Electric Light Company, owned 1,330 arc lamps and was using in private lighting thirty-eight of these. In each case there accompanied the arc lamps a sufficient number of dynamos, engines, boilers, etc., and a building fully equipped for the operation of the number of lamps stated. At the same time the city had in use 134 towers, which had been formerly