I cannot understand what prompts gas companies as a rule to prejudice against electric lighting, unless it be they imagine the outcome to be idle gas mains and cold benches. This I think is all wrong. The largest unoccupied field to-day is the fuel gas field, and who should step in and supply this demand? Could any one do it as well as the present gas companies? We have our mains and services already laid; we have our holders, meters, and trained labor, most of us have also the necessary land to spare on which to erect the generators.
Next to the fuel gas field I think I can see another field nearly as extensive, and that is the coal oil field.
Please imagine the following picture, which is representative of the writer's belief of what a gas company will be in the near future; in fact so near in the future that before our next convention rolls around it will be a reality.
One set of officers, whose principal qualifications shall be progressiveness—their duties to be divided between electric lighting of all kinds, including electric power, fuel gas for all purposes, including gas engines; also incandescent lights off fuel gas mains.
Now let us see what the plant will consist of. One set of mains for fuel gas, from which our patrons will draw all their fuel, and also light, if they wish. Gas engines will be run economically with this gas. One set of meters only will be required.
There will be no coal gas benches as we have them now, as the method of manufacture is too laborious, too expensive and very primitive, not to say barbarous—everything now being built on the horizontal plan, requiring the greatest possible exertion to both draw a charge and stoke. The generators of the future will be on the cupola style, feeding by gravitation from the top. Native coals in all probability will be sufficiently good to make gas of. One portion of the plant will be devoted to the dynamos and engines for furnishing the electric light. Where the coal gas benches now are will be boilers, or perhaps even these will be unnecessary if gas engines be used. If steam boilers be used, they will be fired with producer gas, and the holders will become simply pressure regulators. The revenues of gas companies will be increased fivefold, if not more; the consumer will get cheaper fuel, cheaper power, and cheaper light.
Native coal fields will become more valuable, and we will not pay tribute to other States, as heretofore. The change from illuminating coal gas to fuel gas will perhaps be a slow one, owing to the conservatism of gas companies and imperfected details; but eventually it will be brought about in spite of all obstacles. If a company is operated as pictured, it will furnish arc lighting, incandescent electric lighting, and electric motors, fuel gas, incandescent gas lighting, and gas engines.
Gas will be made on a larger scale, with less dirt and nuisance, and without that laboriousness now made necessary. Valves, levers, and push buttons will displace scoop, drawing hook, and wheelbarrow, and the employees will no longer be known as "gas house terriers," but will become elevated to a higher plane. The officers of the company will also of necessity have to be more active and alert, and the rule of thumb will be at a discount. Now let us see where the gas man will be who fails to occupy these new fields of pasture green.
He will, of course, go on making coal gas in the old way; he will still wrestle with stopped stand pipes, steam jet exhausters, naphthaline, etc., and worry over how much a bushel of coke weighs. He will try to convince his customers that he knows better than they do what they want, and that anything but his gas is of no account. He will keep on cutting out items from the newspapers whenever he finds it recorded that an electric light somewhere failed to flicker.
He will still maintain that there is not a company in the country making anything out of electric lighting, and that it is only a matter of time when some fellow slips into his town and, noting things, works up an arc light company, captures the street lighting and some of our friend's best consumers. The price of gas is lowered; all kinds of patent gas burners are invested in to recapture those lost consumers; a fight ensues, factions are made in the town, and the arc light company adds an incandescent plant to the arc light, and captures more of our friend's consumers. To cap the climax, another fellow comes along and proposes to supply fuel gas to the citizens, gets a franchise, puts in pipes and services, and our friend wakes up some fine morning to find that what the electric light fellow has left him in the shape of lighting has been captured by the fellow with the fuel gas plant, who puts in the incandescent gas burners.