Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/402

 388 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

power, or about two and one-half times the average for the entire state. Meanwhile the two impurities, sulphur and ammonia, referred to in the reports of the gas commissioners, have been decreasing perceptibly although irregularly.

The average amount of gas taken by each consumer has not materially changed during the eight years, 1887-95. The aver- ages for the state are not obtainable, but twenty-six companies show an increase and thirty a decrease of this average. This, however, is consistent with an increase in the average amount taken by small consumers offset by a withdrawal of patronage by certain large consumers. What the facts may be the reports do not indicate.

During the same eight years the number of high-power gas lamps (Lungren, Albo-Carbon, and Welsbach) has risen from Iii6to 12,489, and the greatest amount of that increase has come in the last year, during which the increase was 4700 or 63 per cent.

The number of gas stoves reported as in use is also growing with great rapidity. Between 1894 and 1895 ^ rose from 15,877 to 42,412, an increase of 167 per cent.

The notable increase in the consumption of coal gas has gone on in the face of the competition of the electric lights. How keen that competition has been in Massachusetts is apparently indicated by the steady decrease, year by year, in the number of public lights burning coal gas. It diminished from 19,802 in 1885-6 to 11,946 in 1894-5, a falling off of nearly two-fifths (39.6 per cent.) in nine years.

These changes, whereby the municipalities take a smaller proportion of the coal gas and private consumers more, may affect materially the theoretical arguments concerning municipal ownership of gas, but with those this paper is not concerned.

Closely related to the foregoing modifications is one more important to the general consumer, viz., the reduction in price. The Massachusetts gas commissioners divide the coal gas com- panies by implication into two classes, large and small, and draw the line between them at an annual output of thirty million cubic