THE LIGHTING OF TOWNS.
Street lighting is a modern invention. The history is imperfect, but Alexander Dumas gives credit to the tradition that Naples was first lighted in the seventeenth century by the cunning of a popular and sagacious priest, who induced the people to burn votive lamps before the numerous images of St. Joseph, the patron saint of the city. In the ancient towns people went about at night with lamps; and in mediæval times crimes of vengeance and greed found shelter and safety in the gloom of unlighted thoroughfares and bridges. When lighting began with oil lamps, the situation was not much improved; the feeble glimmer of the lamp-wicks only made certain corners less gloomy. When gas lights began to be used the millennium seemed to have come, and gas was expected to abolish midnight crimes. Until about a score of years ago, there was general satisfaction with gas light. Very satisfactory results were obtained in small towns by the use of petroleum, and the only formidable difficulties were those arising from the high cost of gas in towns of moderate wealth. It almost doubled the tax-levy, and when this bill did not materially decrease the cost of a police force the tax-payers murmured. Still, the work of lighting went on, and as soon as a town became ambitious, its citizens demanded street lights of some kind. The general result has been an immense increase of the aggregate outlays for this purpose. If we take into account the growth of towns and the extension of public lighting, it is safe to estimate that the public lighting bill of the world is twenty times as large as it was fifty years ago.
The invention of electric lights has, by the superior efficiency of this method, rendered oil and gas unsatisfactory; and the electric lamp furnishes three or four times as much light as gas at the same cost. But there are a dozen or more methods of using the electric lamp, and it may be doubted that we have yet reached the end of our inventive wits in this field. It is quite probable that the electric lamp of the next century will cost far less than any now in use. We are yet in the infancy of electrical invention, and it may be wise for communities to suffer a little longer the evils of darkness in order to obtain the best appliances for public lighting. The time is at hand when all towns will have street lamps; the inventors are busy and hopeful, and a little cautious patience in the public will probably stimulate rather than discourage invention. It is a good trait in our people that they want the newest device, at whatever cost; but on the other hand the ability of A to stock the market with an inferior article discourages the efforts of B to devise a superior one. The plant for lighting a town is expensive, and can not easily be thrown aside for a better one. Besides, we are in some danger of hatching a new brood of monopolies to plague us with unreasonable exactions.
We need street lights much more than our fathers did. In large towns—and in many small ones—the din of toil does not cease when darkness comes on. There is a steady increase of night occupations. Some of these occupations are of high convenience, such as the pharmacies, the printing offices, and the depots of travel. Others are means to profitable ends for individuals. In a great city a multitude of people use the streets at night. The market gardener must be in his stall before day dawn. The daily bread is baked or distributed to depots of sale in the night time; a thousand small trades are plied in the darkness to provide the tables of the families with the necessaries and luxuries of life. The result is a growing demand for artificial sunshine, and this demand will be amply met in a near future. The bright lights will do what the feeble lights partially failed to do. The night will cease to be the hour of crime. If one will but think of it, a marvelous change has come over the world since petroleum was discovered in Western Pennsylvania—which was, as it were, but yesterday. Then we had tallow dips in all but the largest towns for all lighting purposes, except when extravagant people burned on rare occasions the costly illuminating oils. To make noonday in a whole town at midnight would have seemed a foolish dream thirty years ago. The world moves—into the light.