TOLEDO VICTOR
It was remarkable to see the revival of the passion of freedom of 1776
and 1861 in the editorials, speeches, resolutions of public meetings,
and the talk of the common people in Toledo as in Columbus. The example
of "the heroic liberty-loving people of Boston" was held up in every
aspect to fire the heart of Toledo not to be frightened into subjection
to the foreign power that threatened them. To resist "the domination
of an economic monarchy" was the appeal made in posters with which the
town was placarded.
"During all the time George III.'s soldiers were quartered in Boston
that monarch did not spend as much money to bring the city to terms as
has been spent in this effort to subjugate the city of Toledo," said
Alderman Macomber.
"A people like those of Toledo," said one of them in the press, "when
once united and determined as they now are, cannot be subjugated by any
combination of mercenaries yet known."
"It is evident," the Toledo _Sunday Gazette_ said, "that the people
of Toledo have come to a full realization of the truth that the money
saved by the independent pipe line, though great, is a matter of little
importance compared with the social and political issues involved. It
would be a thousand times better," it continued, "to utterly bankrupt
the city than permit the oil combination to win. The fight was not for
the present alone, but it was for the present and future, and for all
time to come. It was not for the people of Toledo alone, but it was for
the whole Union, though God had chosen the people of Toledo for the
struggle."
The Cincinnati _Commercial-Gazette_ said, in its editorial columns:
"In itself the Toledo enterprise is not a big one, but it will prove
an object-lesson for the whole country. It will show the open door
through which people may pass from under the yoke of a most gigantic,
unscrupulous, and odious monopoly. And it will be surprising if this
does not extend beyond gas and ultimately cover oil. We are only on the
verge of a revolution that is as sure to come as that which followed
the throwing overboard of a lot of tea in Boston Harbor. Neither the
power nor the vulgarity of capital can long rule the people."
Numerous letters of sympathy, congratulation, and indignation
were received by the Toledo committee appointed by the citizens'
mass-meeting to make a statement of their case to the people of the
United States. There were letters from chairs of political economy in
the universities, from scholars and students in history and politics,
and from men in affairs and finance.
The completion of the line to the city was not the completion of the
enterprise. Mains had still to be laid in the streets, and house
connections made. At every step, now as before, unrelenting opposition
did all that could be conceived of--in the courts, the Legislature, the
city government, the money-market--to block municipal self-help. Great
numbers of the citizens desired to change from the private companies
to the city. Over 7500 consumers were at one time, in 1891, calling
upon the city to supply them.[542] The litigation which was kept up,
and the defeat of the attempt of the city to sell its natural-gas bonds
in the open market, had exhausted the funds at the disposal of the
city trustees. But they showed a readiness of resource equal, with the
help of the people, to all these emergencies, and proving that public
enterprise can more than hold its own in the competition with private
enterprise. Contractors were got to pipe the streets by sections, and
take for pay the pledge of the income earned by the pipes so laid. In
other cases people wanting the gas were willing to advance a part of
the cost. The same contractor who had faith enough in the city to build
the main line from the gas-fields and take the bonds while they were
under fire volunteered in the same way to build the submerged lines
across the Maumee River, and ten miles of mains within the city. This
was done at a moment when otherwise the enterprise must have come to a
stop, and the name of this patriotic contractor is given to the public
by the trustees in their annual report with words of gratitude.
The amount of bonds originally authorized was $750,000. The trustees,
in consequence of the delays and enhanced cost caused by lawsuits and
other tactics of opposition, had to incur a floating debt of $300,000.
The council by ordinance directed the issue of bonds by the city to
the amount of $120,000 to pay off part of this floating debt. The
State Circuit Court refused to sustain this action of the council,
but pointed out that all the city lacked was the authorization of the
Legislature. This was the only decision against the city in all the
litigations, and in this the State Court was afterwards overruled by
the United States Circuit Court. A bill was accordingly introduced,
giving the city the right to issue $300,000 in bonds for the floating
debt, and $100,000 for the extension of the gas plant: wells, pipes,
pumps--whatever was needed. A strong lobby immediately appeared in the
State Capitol to defeat the bill. As part of its ammunition a pamphlet
was circulated among the legislators, giving "Facts and Reasons" why
the Legislature should not authorize the new issue of bonds. This
pamphlet illustrates the easy virtue with which some lawyers dispose
of themselves to those who have the money to pay them. Two of its
strongest points were that the contracts for which the floating debt
had been incurred were let without proper competition, and that the
trustees had no power to make the contracts. This pamphlet was signed
by two lawyers, one of whom, before these contracts were let, had
given the trustees his written opinion supporting such contracts
unqualifiedly. The representatives of the people were able to exhibit
to the Legislature his written opinion stating that the trustees had
the power to make the contracts, and had let them in compliance with
the requirements of the statute as to bids. The pamphlet declared that
the court, in granting the injunction against the issue of the $120,000
of bonds by the Common Council, had declared the claims which were to
be paid by the proceeds of the bonds to be "illegal and invalid." This
was untrue. The court had held only that the city had not the power to
issue the bonds, and pointed out that the remedy was in new legislation
by the State to remedy the want of power.
Pursuing the tactics of defamation of the city and its authorities
which had been used throughout this contest, the pamphlet said: "We
are prepared to prove ... that the contractors put in their bids
substantially as gambling transactions, at such excessive price
that they thought they could take the risk of the illegality of the
natural-gas proceedings, trusting that these illegal transactions would
be permitted to pass without question, or that subsequent legislation
would ratify these illegal acts; all, or nearly all, of the contracts
were taken at prices more than double the fair cash value for all the
work and material provided for; and all the work and materials, the
claims for which now aggregate about $350,000, could have been obtained
in the open market, under valid laws, upon proper terms of payment,
for less than $250,000. We have the evidence within our control to
establish that the work under some of these contracts was actually
done for less than 40 per cent. of the amount named in the contract.
In addition to these facts, we can establish, if permitted to offer
evidence, that the certificates issued by the natural-gas trustees
were, immediately after the conclusion of the contracts and before any
litigation was had upon them, hawked about the streets of Toledo at
from 60 to 75 cents on the dollar; and that the great majority of these
certificates are now in the hands of speculators, who bought them at
not to exceed 65 per cent. of their face value."
The authors of these statements were at once challenged by the city's
gas trustees to prove them. "We assert," the gas trustees said, in
a formal challenge, "that you cannot establish the truth of those
statements. We deny that the facts are as you state them to be, either
in substance or in detail." This was signed by John E. Parsons, W.W.
Jones, Reynold Voit, J.W. Greene, gas trustees, and Clarence Brown
and Thomas H. Tracy, ex-gas-trustees. The city's trustees proposed
that they and their accusers deposit $1000 on each side as a forfeit
to abide the result of an inquiry by the three judges of the Court of
Common Pleas, or any other disinterested arbitrators. They placed at
the service of the accusers and the arbiters all the books, records,
and employés of the city's gas department.
The challenge was not accepted, and the authors of these attacks made
no attempt to prove them. The Legislature disregarded them, and granted
the city and the gas trustees all the additional power to issue bonds
asked for. In a subsequent proceeding in the Federal courts--the issue
involving the validity of these certificates--it was admitted, contrary
to these allegations, that the prices were fair, and that the contracts
were entered into in good faith, and the court held the certificates
valid.
The most serious crisis in the contest was still to come. In 1892 the
gas wells of the city began to do what the people of the city will
never do--surrender to the enemy. When the oil trust found, after years
of opposition in the Legislature, the courts, and the gas-fields, that
it had been helpless to prevent Toledo from getting ample tracts of
excellent gas territory, with some of the largest gas wells in the
field, and equal to the supply of the entire consumption, domestic and
manufacturing, it turned to other tactics.
All about this territory secured by Toledo and found so productive the
private companies of the trust proceeded to buy or lease and to sink
wells. The trust shut off all its own wells, except those adjacent to
the city territory, and for two years drew exclusively from the wells
nearest those of the city. When the city's line was completed to the
wells the volume of gas was found to be largely reduced. It had been
drawn off into the wells of the opposition. In the spring of 1892 the
private companies resolved to put in pumps to strengthen the diminished
natural pressure, but to prevent the city from doing the same thing.
Then, with their pumps alone at work, the pressure could be so much
further reduced as to render the Toledo pipe line valueless. To this
end all efforts were directed. The newspapers were kept full of matter
showing how impossible it was to pump gas, that all the money expended
in pumps would be just so much wasted, and that the companies had
canvassed the matter fully, but abandoned the idea. Column after column
of inspired interviews filled the papers, all admonishing the city of
Toledo not to commit such an act of folly as to put in gas pumps. Then
application was made to enjoin the sale of the bonds authorized by the
council and the Legislature for pumps. So month after month dragged
along. The bonds remained unsold, and the pumps unobtainable.
The injunction was refused both by the Court of Common Pleas and by
the Circuit Court. But there was a right of appeal to the Ohio Supreme
Court until the beginning of 1892. Boston bankers had subscribed for a
large block of the bonds, but withdrew upon learning these facts. "It
is possible for the contestants," the lawyers advised them, "to carry
the matter to the Supreme Court. This, we understand, they propose
to do." The simple assertion of a purpose to continue the litigation
was enough to defeat the sale of the bonds. The payment of costs and
lawyers' fees would be a very moderate price to pay for compelling the
city's gas plant to go past midwinter without the pumps indispensable
for its operation. One of the employés of the private pipe line,
according to an account in one of the Toledo papers, declared to a
reporter that "if we could not prevent the city from putting in a
[pumping] plant any other way, we would blow it up with dynamite."[543]
Any faithful employé familiar with the blowing up of derricks in the
shut-down of 1887,[544] the explosion in the independent refinery at
Buffalo,[545] and the "chemical war" waged by the whiskey trust against
the "outsiders" in Chicago[546] might almost be pardoned for thinking
this was "only good, reasonable talk." The oil monopoly is evangelical
at one end and explosive at the other, and it has made both ends meet.
The people of Toledo were thus prevented from getting the pumping
facilities ready during the summer of 1892 for the work of the winter.
Meanwhile its rival had been secretly pushing pumps for itself to
completion, in the hope that it alone would be ready when cold weather
came. This would mean a gain to it, at the city's expense, of hundreds
of thousands of dollars. Late in August, 1892, the representatives of
the city found that two powerful duplex gas pumps had been shipped
to the gas-field, and were being put in place by the very opponents
who had declared pumps impracticable. Public sentiment became aroused
to the need for the immediate purchase of pumps to protect their
wells. The city attempted to use its income from the sales of gas to
buy pumps. An injunction was applied for and granted. This emergency
was finally met by having the gas trustees hand over to the city
authorities the accumulated earnings they were forbidden by the court
to spend themselves. The city thereupon turned around and invested
this money in the gas bonds. In this way the identical money the gas
trustees could not use while it remained in their hands was made
available to them by passing through the hands of the Sinking Fund
Trustees, and coming back to them. Thus the natural-gas trustees were
enabled to make a contract in September, 1892, for pumps to assist the
flow of gas to the city.
The gas pumps are a patented device. The private companies, wanting
all the profit of everything, had had their pumps made at their own
factory. The city made its contract directly with the owner of the
patents. The result was that the city got its pumps in place in time
to save the city pipe line, while its opponents were delayed by the
inexperience of their own pump-makers. This was the most critical
period in our history. Greed had again defeated itself. Had the
opposition gone to the owner of the patents he would have been unable
afterwards to take the city's contract and complete it in time, and the
effort to make the city line valueless would have succeeded--for the
time being, at least. The bonds in question were afterwards held valid
by the Supreme Court.
Toledo knew it was building wisely, and every day brought new proof
that it had builded better than it knew. Its saving was great, but
that was the least of its gains. It escaped tyranny and extortion and
other wrongs which fell upon communities in plain sight, which had not
the wit and virtue to establish their independence. When the city pipe
line was opened in 1891 the city began supplying gas to its citizens
at 8 cents a thousand for houses. The private companies were charging
12 cents a thousand, or 50 per cent. more. Profits were such at this
charge of 12 cents a thousand feet that in some tracts single wells
would repay the cost of the land every four days and two hours, or
eighty-nine times a year. Since then the private corporations have
raised their rate to 25 cents. The city continued the rates at 8 cents
until December, 1892, when the rate was advanced to 15 cents. This
advance would have been unnecessary but for the losses arising from the
obstructions placed in the way of the city plant.
The people of Toledo got their gas lands, pipe line, and street mains
for an outlay of $1,181,743 up to the end of 1891,[547] and $1,294,467
up to the end of 1892. In the canvass before the election in 1889 their
opponents declared that $4,000,000 would be required.
Private enterprise cannot find rhetoric strong enough to express its
contempt for the inefficiency, costliness, and despotisms of public
enterprise. Private enterprise put at $6,000,000--twelve times the
amount of the property they reported for taxation--the "capital"
stock invested by the two natural-gas companies. The city pipe line
was capitalized (bonded) at just what it cost--a little more than
a million. The city trustees built a better pipe line than private
enterprise had laid. The private line was of cheap iron of 14-feet
lengths, while Toledo's was in 24-feet pieces. One of the private lines
was laid with rubber joints and in shallow trenches, in many places of
not more than plough depth. It leaked at almost every joint; its course
could be traced across the fields by the smell of gas and the blighted
line of vegetation. There were frequent explosions from the escaping
gas; lives and property were much endangered. The city line was laid
with lead joints, and had every device that engineering experience
could suggest for its success, and was so constructed that it could
be cleaned or repaired, and freed from liquids interfering with the
flow of gas, without shutting off the supply--features the other pipe
had not. The action of the city trustees had to endure the microscopic
scrutiny of friend and foe. No one was able to show as to a single acre
that the title was defective, or that it could have been bought for
less, or to find any taint of a job in the construction of the pipe. A
committee of the city council sat and probed for six weeks, but failed
to find any evidence whatever to confirm the reported "irregularities."
What Toledo will save in one year by the difference between the actual
cost at which its people can supply themselves and the price the
private companies would have charged, to pay dividends on $6,000,000 of
"capital," is only part of the story. The profit of the city enterprise
is to be estimated by its competitive effect upon the charge of the
private companies. These have been kept down in Toledo much below the
average of other towns, where they have been as high as 35 cents a
thousand. If the city had not supplied a foot of gas this check on the
private companies would make its pipe line still a good investment.
The people, when it is in full operation, can pay the cost of the
system complete out of the savings of a few years, then pay off the
entire city debt, and have a large income left for public buildings,
roads, parks. Or by reduction of price they can keep this sum in their
pockets, where it will do quite as much for the general welfare as if
it had been transferred to the bank accounts of non-residents.
The city, at the end of 1891, had 3299-3/4 acres of gas land. In March,
1892, forty-five wells were giving over 50,000,000 cubic feet of gas,
equal to 3500 tons of anthracite coal. Its income from the sale of gas
was at the rate of $20,032 a month in winter, and $10,221 in summer.
An investigation made in March, 1892, by a committee appointed by the
mayor at the request of the city's gas trustees, showed that an income
could be counted on ($180,000) ample to pay all expenses ($128,120),
including interest, rentals, and the cost of drilling new wells, and
provide a small fund annually ($51,880) for the extinction of the
bonded debt. The committee said: "We believe that if the gas plant is
properly managed upon prudent business principles and methods, that it
can be made a profitable investment for the city and her people; that
the class who will derive the greatest benefit is the laboring class,
who pay rent or taxes upon their little homes, and to whom the matter
of cheap fuel is quite an item in the total amount of annual expenses;
and we believe it to be the duty of every good citizen to aid and
encourage this class."
These were the results with a charge of 8 cents a thousand. Gas to
the amount of $167,899 had been sold up to August 1, 1892. Between
November, 1891, and August, 1892, the city earned on the million
invested the sum of $150,000, or nearly one-ninth of the cost of
the plant, and this at the low price of 8 cents a thousand feet.
Unobstructed by its enemies and at the price charged by the private
companies, 20 cents a thousand, the city would pay for its entire plant
in less than three years.
To discourage the public from going forward with its pipe line the
private companies "talked poor." In an interview in the public
press the president of the principal company said it had paid but
9 per cent. in dividends in two and a half years. The net earnings
were stated to be "about 4 per cent. per annum on the capital,"
$4,000,000;[548] for the smaller company they were figured out to be
at the rate of a fraction less than 1 per cent. a year on its capital
of $2,000,000.[549] "We feel sore and hurt about it," said the "direct
representative" of the oil combination to the citizens' committee; "we
have seen no good return from our money." "It has pretty nearly swamped
us," said the president of the company. The citizens of Toledo were
shrewd enough to ask themselves how long their antagonists would have
been likely to remain in a business which paid only 3 per cent., and
was as "hazardous" and "shortlived" as they pictured it to be. Careful
estimates made by close students of the question calculated that of
the $6,000,000 of paper capital "invested" in the two companies which
supplied Toledo and other cities, $1,125,000 was the proportion of
actual cash devoted to Toledo. The receipts upon this Toledo investment
in the two and three-quarters years between the opening of the business
and the date at which, by the contract with the city, the council was
to make new rates (June 30, 1890), were, as nearly as can be calculated
from the figures of their report, $1,300,000 greater than the expenses
of the Toledo business. This is a profit of 115 per cent. In less than
three years the total investment had been repaid by the profits, and,
in addition, enough to have paid dividends of 5 per cent. a year.
This was an estimate, but it was an estimate publicly made from the
companies' figures, and by a responsible man. It remained unchallenged
at a time when every cranny of fact and fiction was being rummaged for
missiles to fling at the people.
When the citizens' committee sought a reduction in price, the companies
pointed to the small dividend their stockholders had had. In the face
of the fact that they had received but a 3-per-cent. dividend the
previous year, no business man, their spokesman said, could ask them
to reduce their price. It is for such uses that shrewd men "water"
stock. The surface of the capital is broadened, so that even large
dividends can cover it only by being spread out very thin. This 3 per
cent. a year was on $6,000,000 of dilution, representing a solid, at
the most, of only $1,500,000. The balance sheets of the companies
showed that the companies had paid small dividends for the additional
reason that a large part of their receipts had been reinvested in
lands, wells, and extensions of the pipes and plants.
The people are often assured that these false figures of capitalization
are merely romantic and do them no harm, because charges must be
governed by the "laws of trade." One of the "laws of trade" that
regulates the "market price" of such commodities as transportation,
light, water, gas, furnished by the help of the public franchises, is
the power of the public to regulate. This public power depends upon the
public knowledge and the public disposition. To make the public believe
that the profit of serving it has been only 3 per cent. a year, when it
has been nearer 50 per cent., is to manipulate public opinion, the most
potent of all the "laws of trade," for a competing supply cannot be got
easily, often not at all.
A committee of citizens were invited by the representatives of the gas
companies to meet them to verify the statements of the companies as to
the unprofitableness of the business, and the inexpediency of municipal
self-supply. But when the committee wanted to know what had been the
real cost of the private pipe lines, on the $6,000,000 nominal capital
of which the people were expected to pay dividends, they could not get
any satisfaction. The companies would only give an estimate. To the
request for more definite information, the reply of both companies
was, "We have not got the books of the contractors; we have never
had them. We have no means of knowing the actual cost of the Toledo
plant, or any books to show it.[550] We have no papers or documents in
regard to the construction of this line." It came to light later that
one of the companies in the oil trust had constructed the pipe line
for the gas company, and at a price approximating the large figures
claimed. The company that built this pipe line is a ring within the oil
and gas ring, always on hand for such contracts and at like margins
of profit, and it is owned almost wholly by the principals of the
combination.[551] The people--mostly Ohioans--who took the minority 40
per cent. of stock of the gas company were really the "simple greens."
All that was paid for this construction by those who were members
both of the inside ring and the gas company came back to them; their
associates in the minority paid, but got nothing back. It was from the
latter came the profits of this contract to the insiders.
The people of Dayton had a similar experience. Their natural-gas
company demanded an advance to 25 cents a thousand, and met a committee
of the people to prove that the demand was proper. But it would not let
the people know what the actual investment was to make which good it
sought to tax the people. The books containing the construction account
were "not accessible." "The actual cost to construct the plant is what
we most desired to know," the committee reported. As at Toledo, so at
Dayton; all private enterprise would let its customer-subjects know was
what it wanted them to pay; information to show what they ought to pay
"was not accessible." What the profits were elsewhere can be guessed at
from the fact that in Pennsylvania $36 a year was charged in most of
the towns for cooking-stoves. In Toledo the charge was $19.50 a year.
Almost every day after the pipe line had been decided on the people saw
something done, showing how well founded their apprehensions had been.
The power to discriminate in rates the people saw used by the private
companies for selfish and anti-public purposes, precisely as they had
foreseen it would be. When the fight for and against the city pipe
line was on, one of the gas companies sought to enlist the strong men
in their support by making them special rates, pursuing the tactics of
divide and conquer. Manufacturers with influence useful in controlling
public sentiment were conceded special rates. Others were given to
understand that any lack of "loyalty" would be followed by punishment.
So effective were these alternating methods of boodling and bulldozing
that the council committee on gas, in a subsequent investigation, found
it almost impossible to obtain any information from manufacturers as
to their use of natural gas for fuel. What little they did secure was
under injunctions of secrecy. The committee found that some were made
to pay twice, some three, and some even four times as much as was paid
by neighbors for like service. The only rule for charging seemed to be
to favor those who had "influence." This was using municipal franchise
just as the franchise of the highways had been used in their behalf by
the railways. An assembly of divines could not be trusted with such
power over their fellows.
After the Fostoria incident the people of Toledo had another
illustration given them of how wisely they had builded. The gas supply
of the people of Columbus, Ohio, was shut off arbitrarily and suddenly
in midwinter--January, 1891--and they were informed that the company
would supply them with no more gas unless the City Council would raise
the price to 25 cents a thousand feet from 10 cents. The gas had not
failed. The caverns that discharge gas at 25 cents a thousand will let
it come just as freely at 10 cents. The council had fixed the price
at 10 cents, and the company had accepted it. The demand for a higher
price was close upon an increase in the capital stock of the Columbus
company from $1,000,000 to $1,750,000. More stock called for more
dividends, and this was one way to get it--to strike this sudden blow,
and then to say, after the manner of Silas Wegg, "Undone for double
the money!" It was for the power to do this at Toledo, to preserve the
power of doing it everywhere else, that hell and earth were being moved
in Toledo to prevent the people from serving themselves and setting an
example to the rest of America. In the same way the gas was turned off
at Sidney, Ohio, and not turned on again until, upon the application of
the mayor, the company was ordered to do it by the courts. "There is a
great deal of suffering here," the press reported, "and it is feared
that several deaths will result from exposure."
The people did not fail to comprehend the significance of criticisms
in the Toledo organ on the municipal water supply. Monopoly must go on
conquering and to conquer, or be overborne by the ever-recuperating
resentment which rises against it, freshened with each new day. Nature
hates monopoly, says Emerson. The studied attack on the city water
works was believed to be meant to prepare the people to intrust that as
well as the gas supply to the trust's "sound business men" and "private
enterprise."
Finding that the council would not bend to the demands as to rates,
and that the people were too resolute to be in any way diverted from
their pipe line, Toledo was given some such doses as could be ventured
upon of the Fostoria and Columbus medicine. The company shut gas off
from those who would not pay the increased rate. It deprived public
institutions of their fuel. It refused to supply gas to a new public
school whose building was planned for natural gas. As the city's pipe
line was not completed, the children had to go cold. The winter of
1891-2 was the first winter the city's pipe line was in operation. With
the first cold snap, at the end of November, great distress and danger
were brought upon the people by a lawless act, done secretly by some
unknown person to the city's pipe line. One of the main pipes in the
gas-field, through which flowed the product of two of the largest gas
wells, was disconnected, so that its gas could no longer reach Toledo.
Who did this was never discovered.[552]
Defeat, final and irrevocable, crowned the unvarying series of
defeat which the private companies had suffered everywhere and in
everything--in public meetings, in the Legislature, in the gas-fields,
at the polls, in the courts, in the sale of the bonds, and in the
competition with the city. The City Council of Toledo, advised by its
lawyers that it could recover damages from those responsible for the
losses brought upon the city by the opposition to its pipe line, has
had suit brought for that purpose. April 14, 1893, City Solicitor
Read began proceedings to recover $1,000,000 damages from members of
the oil combination and the various individuals who had been used as
stalking-horses in the campaign. At the next meeting of the Common
Council several citizens of the "influential" persuasion assisted the
mayor in trying to coax and bully the council to abandon the suit, but
without success. The council were threatened with a financial boycott
to prevent the sale in future of any of the bonds of the city, but it
refused to be terrorized.
April 8, 1893, the natural-gas trustees of Toledo had the happiness
of being able to give formal notice to the city auditor that no taxes
need be levied to pay the interest on the gas bonds, as it "can easily
be met from the revenues derived from the sale of natural gas." The
city pipe line was on a paying basis at last. Toledo had vindicated
its claim to be a free city. The completion of the enterprise had
been delayed three years. A loss of not less than two million dollars
had been laid on the city, but its victory was worth many times that.
Toledo's victory showed the country, in full and successful detail,
a plan of campaign of which Columbus had merely given a hint. It was
not a local affair, but one of even more than national importance, for
the oil combination has invaded four continents. This struggle and its
results of good omen will pass into duly recorded history as a warning
and an encouragement to people everywhere who wish to lead the life of
the commonwealth.
NOTE.--For the year ending December 31, 1893, the city trustees report
that they sold gas to the amount of $139,066. The city owns 5433 acres
of gas territory, and has 85 wells, 73 miles of pipe outside the city,
and 91 miles in the city. Since the gas began to flow the sales have
amounted to $388,540. Out of the receipts the debt has been reduced
$60,000, besides refunding $67,000 to those who advanced the money for
piping the streets. While doing this the plant has been considerably
enlarged. The city accomplished this while charging the people but
15 cents a thousand, while the gas companies of the trust charged
25 cents a thousand. Had the city been permitted to act without
obstruction, the cost of the gas plant would have been long since
fully paid, and the price of gas made still lower.[553]