no capacity to understand the question at issue, who violated all the ordinary rules of decency, and desecrated in a disgusting manner the Church in which it was necessary to hold the meeting. The scene had literally all the features of a bear-garden. From one to two thousand persons, for the most part unwashed, unshaven and in rags, had taken possession of all the pews in the Church before the proceedings commenced, most of them having their hats on, and the majority standing upon the seats or the backs of the pews; subsequently crowds of these people made their way into the gallery, clambering from seat to seat, and covering with filth the seats and cushions on which they trod.

The great Whig organ, the Manchester Guardian, was scarcely less outspoken with regard to a vestry meeting of 1832. It declared that its report utterly failed

in conveying anything like an adequate impression of the disgusting character of the proceedings, . . . of the degree of reckless violence, unabashable impudence and Billingsgate scurrility. . . . We expect that one of the early acts of a reformed Parliament will be to put an end altogether to the necessity of meetings like that of Wednesday. It is utterly preposterous that thirty thousand people (even if the meetings were really confined to leypayers, which notoriously they are not) should be called together for the transaction of parish business. Such assemblies neither have nor can have a deliberative character. They are by their very constitution utterly incapable of the calm and dispassionate consideration of any disputed public question in its various aspects. And we hold it to be utterly impossible that, in the intended municipal constitutions to be given to the new boroughs, the superseding of these ancient forms, which however suited to the small towns and sluggish habits of byegone days, are worse than useless among our immense masses of population at the present time, should not form one of the most prominent objects. The representative system must be introduced for the regulation of those expenditures connected with the poor rates, which now come before promiscuous meetings of the leypayers, as well as with those of the other local taxes.

SIDNEY and BEATRICE WEBB.

LONDON, ENGLAND.

(To be continued.)

MUNICIPAL GAS AND ELECTRIC PLANTS IN

ONE

MASSACHUSETTS.

NE of the first municipal electric street-lighting plants in the United States was built by the town of Danvers, Massachusetts, in the year 1888. This plant quickly attracted the attention of other municipalities, and also of the private corporations that were engaged in similar work, especially as Danvers petitioned the legislature, in 1889, for authority to supply private consumers from its plant. In the session of 1890 dozens of petitions with thousands of signers, coming from the cities of Boston, Worcester, Fall River, Lowell, Lawrence and New Bedford, as well as from many smaller places, were presented to the legislature, asking that cities and towns be permitted to distribute gas and electricity for general use. Judging by results, the influence of the private corporations seems to have been more potent with the legislators than were the wishes of the petitioners, for a bill was reported that has since proved to be very favorable to existing gas and electric interests. This bill1 became the basis of the MunicipalLighting Act of 1891.

By this act cities and towns are authorized to purchase or construct gas and electric plants both for street lighting and for the general supply of the service to their inhabitants. When a city or town has, in the manner prescribed in the act, decided to establish a municipal gas plant under it, this city or town is required to buy all existing gas plants engaged in public supply within its limits, if the owners wish to sell. In like manner a city or town that has decided to establish an electric plant must purchase existing electric plants on the demand of their owners. Moreover, in a city or town where the gas and electric plants are under common ownership, the decision to establish a municipal plant for either gas or electrical supply 1 House Document No. 436 of 1890.

fixes on it the obligation to purchase all existing plants of both kinds, at the will of their owners. The price of each plant thus required to be purchased is determined, under the act, by one or more commissioners appointed for the special case by the Supreme Judicial Court, and their decision is subject to confirmation by this tribunal. That a town or city may not escape the obligation imposed by the act or force the owner of a gas or electric plant to sell at a low figure, it is provided that no rights granted to the owners of such plants for the use of the public streets shall be revoked while the question of municipal ownership is pending. In case of a town the obligation to purchase existing gas or electric plants within its limits is created when a vote to establish such a plant under the act has been passed by two-thirds of the voters, at each of two town meetings, held not less than two or more than thirteen months apart. In a city the obligation can only be fixed after a vote that it is expedient to establish a gas or electric plant has been passed by a two-thirds majority of the city council and approved by the mayor in each of two consecutive municipal years, and has subsequently been ratified at an annual or special municipal election.

In order to understand the full force of this legislation, in so far as it relates to the compulsory purchase of existing gas and electric plants, it is necessary to note that the cities and nearly all of the largest towns of the state were supplied with such plants under private ownership at the time of the passage of the bill. It thus became necessary to buy out very large private interests before municipal plants could be established in the localities where they were most desirable. But even this heavy obligation might not have operated as a very serious check on the establishment of municipal plants, had not the operation of the act shown that it required a much greater outlay to pay for existing plants than would be necessary to install new plants of equal capacity. As the law now stands, a city or town that wishes merely to install a plant for its electric street lamps, must purchase all the electric plants within its limits devoted to commercial lighting. Moreover, if the gas

and electric systems happen to be under a single ownership in any place, all the gas and electric plants within its limits must be purchased before it may supply its own electric street lamps. The Act of 1891 and the subsequent legislation on the same subject, while conferring on cities and towns the right to establish municipal gas and electric plants, have thus operated as a restriction on municipal ownership as it might have developed under more favorable legislation. All of the large cities of the state, most of which petitioned through some of their inhabitants for authority to distribute gas and electricity for general use, are still without municipal plants in these lines. Even the great majority of the smaller places continue to be supplied with gas and electricity from private systems. The facts which follow seem to show that the relatively slight development in municipal systems has been due to the fear on the part of cities and towns of the enforced purchase of existing plants at excessive prices.

Though private gas or electric corporations have the power to force the purchase of their plants, when the necessary steps. have been taken for municipal ownership, the cities or towns cannot force the private corporations to sell. On the other hand such corporations are free to continue the operation of their plants, and no rights granted in the streets can be revoked by the cities or towns. Strange to say, none of the private corporations have chosen to retain their generating plants in any of the eight cities and towns where these plants were located when municipal ownership was decided on. Even in the two instances where private corporations had only distributing apparatus in towns that decided on municipal plants of the same sort, the corporations elected to sell. Two towns have each bought a distributing plant formerly owned by a private corporation. Seven cities and towns have each bought both generating and distributing plants. One town, North Attleboro, refused to purchase a private generating plant within its limits, when municipal ownership was decided on, and the case was not taken to court, but the plant was moved out of the town. In three instances, those of Middleboro,

Hingham and Hull, in 1893 and 1894, the towns reached amicable agreements with the owners of plants. In the other six cases, cities and towns have been forced to purchase existing plants at the suits of their owners. Even the three towns that reached amicable agreements for the purchase of plants were obliged to give the full prices demanded, or run the risk of suits at law. Since 1894 no mutual agreements between the owners of plants and the towns where they are located have been reached, the private corporations evidently finding it more to their advantage to bring suit. Three private plants were purchased by towns in 1894, and only five during the entire period since that year, when the practical working of the municipal-ownership law became evident.

The chief features of the movement toward municipal pur-1 chase are embodied in the following table.

In order to bring out the relations between the prices paid by cities and towns for gas and electric plants, and the values and earning capacities of these plants, we will compare the amount of stock, bonds and notes outstanding, in the case of each of the corporations that owned the plants, with its net earnings during its last fiscal year of operation. By net earnings is here meant the difference between income and operating expenses, no allowance being made for interest, depreciation or dividends. In the cases of Hingham and Belmont no attempt is made to determine either the investment in or the earning capacity of the distributing systems purchased, because these