Omaha daily bee., 1906-01-15
As TO MUNICIPAL LIGHTING.


From now on until after the city
election the people of Omaha will be
bombarded by political demagogues
masquerading as municipal ownership
champions with transformation about
public lighting. A red letter and a red
figure campaign for dollar gas and a
municipal gas plant has already been
opened by the paper that sandbagged
and helped to defeat the proposition for
municipal electric light plant last year,
and the catchy refrain has been echoed
by the Jacksonian mayoralty candidate.
Anybody who has given the subject
serious thought must realize that the
clamor for a municipal gas plant is
delusion and snare. The use of gas
for public lighting will soon be a thing
of the past. A writer in the Chicago
Record-Herald discussing the gas agita-
ton in that city, poses these pertinent
queries:
Why should we consider propositions Of
9O-cent gas or even 75-cent gas? If the
price of horses is high, may we not con-
slider the automobile?
The gas company has indeed been pro-
gressive and enterprising, while people
were asleep and has shown by the aid
Of clever advertising men what excellent
things may be accomplished with gas
both Illuminating and heating. But, after
all, is it not about time to wake up and
take notice of the marvellous changes
wrought by electricity
AS a matter OF civic and civil engineer
ing, the piping of our streets. the con-
tinued destruction of costly paving by con-
struction and repair work, the conducting
of an in1ammable and poisonous gas
through our streets and buildings causing
such disasters as occurred in Dearborn
street and Archer avenue not long ago, and
causing more or less ill-health through the
breathing Of poisoned air wherever gas is
used, is a sufficient argument against the
general use of gas as an iluminant.
In this new age of electricity we send
unnumbered volts of power through our
streets, some of 1t harnessed and much OF
it wild and beyond control, to the destruc-
tion OF gas mains and peril of innocent
| folks who live above our streets. Tho
remedy for a great part of the evils mem
toned above and the solution of cheaper
light lies in the substitution of electricity
for gas with the location of the power plant
at the mine.
While Omaha is not In position to
avail itself of electric energy generated
at coal mine in its vicinity, it will
soon be in position to do its own public
| lighting at the lowest expense without
! investing in gas manufacturing plant.
Omaha is now paying over 100000 a
year for street lighting. When Omaha
secures possession of the water works
| ii will be i'm position to do its street
| lighting for one-half what it now pays
to the electric light, gas and gasoline
companies.
An expenditure of less than 100000
for dynamos and additional boilers will
enable the city to- generate its own light
at the Florence water works station.
and an outlay of 100000 more for wires
and poles and conduits will enable it to
do its own public lighting at the actual
cost of production. When that time
comes the streets of Omaha will be illu.
minated by arc lights OF 1000 or LOO
candle power, instead of go or SO-candle
power gas lamps and 200 to 3OO-candle
power electric are lamps. What is more
! desirable still, 1t will be able to conduct
| its municipal affairs without the de-
moralizing intervention OF public light.
ing corporations.
|
| Candidates for municiDaI Office viii,