THE LIGHTING OF LONDON. T HE appearance of the Report which
Major Marindin has just presented to the Board of Trade, enables us to realise fully the enormous growth not only in the demand for the electric light, but in the ability to supply it which has marked the last five years. If the Board of Trade accepts, as we presume it will, the prin- ciples laid down in the Report as the result of very careful and exhaustive inquiries, every Londoner will, speaking broadly, have the opportunity within a very few months' time of lighting his house by electricity. Major Marindin, iu effect, recommends the making of provisional orders which will apportion the Metropolitan area among a number of Companies, power being given, in consideration of such con- cession, to any householder to require the light to be supplied him at a certain fixed rate. The details of the arrange- ment which is to be made are, as far as can be gathered from the Report, to be as follows. The body which obtains a provisional order will have the right within its district of supply to lay down wires and light houses during a period of forty-two years. At the end of that time, the local authority will have a right to put an end to the concession and buy up the plant of the Company. To protect the public, however, during the continuance of the forty-two years, the terms of the grant are to be revisable at the end of seven years, and not only is a maximum charge arranged for, but those who supply the light are to be forbidden to exact more than a certain sum as the maximum for which the light is to be supplied. That is to say, the amount charged, as it were, as a ground-tax, and paid each year whether or not the equivalent amount of electricity is used, is to be strictly limited. Lastly, the Company, after a 10 per cent. dividend has been reached, is to apply a. propor- tionate part of its profits to reducing its prices.
The first thing which will strike those who read the practical conclusions arrived at in the Report, is that no proper provision is made for competition. Except in one or two cases, what look at first sight like monopoly rights are granted to the various existing Companies. Yet in reality, the Board of Trade are entirely in favour of competition. This apparent anomaly is to be explained in the following way. The Report, to begin with, lays down the principle that competition is desirable in order to secure both cheapness and efficiency. Com- petition should, however, be subject to two important considerations. It would be exceedingly inconvenient if an indefinite number of Companies were allowed at their own will and pleasure to tear up the streets, when and how they liked. Again, it would be a serious public evil to have so large an amount of dead capital as would be repre- sented by the works of a number of Companies buried under ground ; and, lastly, since at the end of the forty-two years the local authorities might wish to undertake the lighting themselves, it would be wrong to saddle them with the obligation of buying up the plant of four or five rival bodies. In view of these circumstances, Major Marindin advises, and rightly advises the Board of Trade to allow not more than two Companies, when several apply, to light the same district. It happens, however, that the system employed by a great many of the bodies now anxious to lay their wires to the houses of London—that known as "the alternating current and transformer"—cannot be used " to run motors." But it is obvious that if only two com- peting Companies are to be admitted into a street, one at least should be capable of performing such work ; and therefore the Report recommends that when all the Com- panies demanding entrance to a particular district are those conducted on the " alternating current and trans- former " plan, only one shall be chosen, in order to allow a system suitable for machinery to be introduced at some future time. But since almost all the existing Companies use the system which is unsuitable for motors, it happens that the application of this principle generally results, for the present at any rate, in an abandon- ment of competition and in the establishment of a monopoly, though of a monopoly very strictly limited in the public interest. Whether this solution of the problem of competition in regard to electric lighting will prove, on the whole, satisfactory, is a question which it is not easy to answer. In our opinion, there can be no doubt that wherever really free competition can be introduced, it is better to put no limitation whatever on human enterprise. For instance, in such a matter as ocean transit, the principle of unlimited competition should obviously be adopted. When, however, we come to the case of laying wires in a particular street, the conditions are entirely altered, and free competi- tion is no longer a benefit. Not more than a strictly limited number of Companies can wire one street. Say that five is the limit, as it well might be. Then the five who are first to apply get between them an absolute monopoly, guarded from all interference by the physical impossibility of laying down any more cables ; and if they combine, as American experience shows they will, the public is at the mercy of the combination. If, instead, the State in the first instance recognises the fact that the limits of space necessarily forbid true, open competition, and that it is no good to pretend that we can obtain the electric light as we obtain our meat, our bread, and our wine in the open market, and if it therefore prefers the grant of a limited monopoly to allowing the first-comers to seize on the public custom, the interests of the community will, we cannot help thinking, be better served. On the whole, we believe that, subject to the many provi- sions for protecting the consumers recommended by the Report, Major Marindin's scheme of competition limited to two Companies employing different systems, is the best that can be adopted. The restrictions certainly prevent the public being delivered bound hand and foot into the power of a combination of Companies.
That electric lighting will increase the health and comfort of the community, we can hardly doubt. The great difficulty of all other forms of illumination is the impos- sibility of increasing the light without also increasing the heat. Electricity, however, overcomes this inconvenience, and practically gives light without heat and without flickering. To burn gas for six hours continuously, is to proilvice an atmosphere so dry and so vitiated by the escapes which always take place during combustion, as to be almost unbearable. With electric light, however, it is possible to work all night and in pure air. In only one particular is gas to be preferred, though that is by no means an unimportant one. The electricians have up till now failed to produce light cheaply. It is useless to say, as they often do, that if people will only be con- tent with the same amount of light as they get from lamps or candles, electricity is cheaper than gas. Such con- tentions, though theoretically true, are practically delusive, and for this reason. We are accustomed to light our rooms from several centres,—a lamp of, say, ten-candle power on one table; a couple of smaller lamps, say of five-candle power each, on another ; and a pair of candles on the mantelpiece. In all, they may not amount to twenty-two-candle power, and yet a couple of incandescent globes which perhaps give the light of thirty-two, will not appear to afford half so much illumination. We have learnt to expect artificial light to come from many quarters, and whatever the experts may say, find it impossible not to count the heads of our lamps. It happens, therefore, that, as a matter of fact, it is practically more costly to light a room with electricity than with gas or mineral oil,—than with anything, in fact, but wax candles. That in the end electric light will be produced far more cheaply than at present, we do not doubt, though here, again, we are in opposition to the experts, who declare that it would be impossible to convert a ton of coal into a greater amount of light than is done now by the best machinery. This may no doubt be true ; but if it is, the sooner we can find some other means of generating electricity than by steam-power, the better. A great engineer once surprised a scientific meeting by declaring that coal would never be cheap till it was £10 a ton. Probably the engineer was right. Coal is not plentiful enough to be treated as we treat air and water, and yet not dear enough to force us to economise its use. If it once rose to £10 a ton, we should never consent to send half of it up our chimneys unconsumed, nor should we refuse to let the waterfalls, the winds, and the tides work our dynamos. The London Electric Supply Cor- poration has built by the side of the Thames at Deptford a building which is said to contain the largest boilers ever made. Here, by means of machinery run by steam, a wire cable is to be charged with an electric current so powerful that it will practically be a buried thunderbolt, ready throughout its thousand sinuosities to destroy with the lightning-stroke any person mad enough to break through the safeguards with which it will be surrounded. Yet while steam is being used to generate this mighty current, the resistless and unfailing forces of the tide will sweep past the engine-house twice a day, ready to be bridled for the use of humanity by the first man bold enough and clever enough to master the physical difficulties that for the moment lie in the way of success. Shall we really have to wait, we wonder, for our new Stevenson till the commonplace necessity of a coal-famine has again shown the truth of the ignoble proverb, and proved necessity to be the mother of invention ?
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