several of the great railway milk routes entering New York City, the rates being the same within distances of 200 miles, and says the interstate commerce commission: "It has served the public well. It tends to promote consumption and to stimulate production. It is not apparent how any other method could be devised that would present results equally useful or more just. It is upon the whole the best system that could be devised for the general good of all engaged in the traffic." Yes, and experience is rapidly proving that this system of grouping stations with a uniform standard rate, regardless of distance, is quite as applicable to other branches of railway traffic as to milk.

Potatoes are given the same rates from the different stations on the lines and branch lines of the New York, Philadelphia & Norfolk road within limits of 200 miles.

The grouping of stations with a uniform rate is very common in the coal districts. The entire Hocking Valley is grouped. In the Delaware peninsula, the rates on grain, flour, and other similar products are the same for a large group of stations.

All or nearly all the hundreds of railroad stations in New England, south of Portland, Me., are included in the group known as "Boston Points," from which the rates are the same on the same class of goods to each of the stations in even larger groups in the South and West.

In transcontinental traffic, all the Pacific Coast terminals, from Tacoma and Seattle, in the state of Washington, on the north, to San Diego, Cal., in the south, are in one group from which the rates are, in general, uniform to all the principal stations in each of the six great groups into which the railroad territory of the United States east of the Missouri River is divided. The carload rates on oranges are the same from Los Angeles, Cal., to all stations east of the Mississippi River, the same to Chicago, 2,265 miles, and to New York, 3,180 miles. The carload rates on grain are the same over the Northern Pacific Railway, from all its stations in the state of Washington, to St. Paul, Minn.

On petroleum and its products, the western-bound rates to San Francisco, Sacramento, Oakland, Stockton, Marysville, San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Diego, Cal., are the same over the all-rail lives, from all points in the United States east of the Missouri River.

In January, 1894, the Canadian Pacific road commenced to sell passenger tickets at the same rate, $40 first-class and $30 second-class, from St. Paul to Vancouver, 1,660 miles, to Portland, 1,990 miles, and to San Francisco, 2,760 miles.

The custom of giving large groups of stations a uniform rate on similar goods, in through business, has, indeed, become almost universal, and, as I have shown, it is not uncommon in local traffic. Milk, oranges, potatoes, coal, grain, passengers, are transported to-day, in numberless instances on our American railways, at the same rates, between stations varying in distance from one another and from the starting point, from a score of miles to a thousand.

Nor is this growing custom confined to the United States. The milk rates on the Great Western Railway of England, are the same for distances 10 miles to 100.

The stations in the coal regions are very commonly grouped both in Great Britain and on the Continent. The same rates are charged from coal stations in Germany to Bremen and to Hamburg, although the former is 71 miles further off than the latter.

In 1889, the railway stations of Hungary were grouped for long-distance traffic, within distances of 140 miles to 457 miles, with a uniform rate, by ordinary trains, first-class, $3.20, second-class, $2.32, third-class, $1.60, and by express, first-class, $3.84, second class, $2.80, and third-class $1.92.

In the summer of 1893, the Belgian government began selling passenger tickets good for 15 days over its entire network of railways, some 2,000 miles, for $10 first-class, $7.60 second class, and $5 for third-class tickets, thus placing its whole railroad system in one group.

As to the grouping of stations with a common rate in our city tramway traffic, every American knows how wonderfully profitable it has been to the tramways and what a boon it has proved to the people.

Nearly sixty years have passed since Sir Rowland Hill startled the people of England with his scheme of a "penny post," proposing at one sweep to reduce the average price of inland postage from 20 cents to 2 cents, and to carry a letter from Land's End to John O'Groat's at the same rate as from London to the nearest village. It was a new idea in those days, this placing all the postal stations of a great country in one group, with one uniform standard rate, and that the lowest rate then existing, and the postal authorities declared the reformer mad. But we all know the story of Mr. Hill's wonderful triumph. His plan was hardly made public before it attracted great and hearty support, and in a very short time it was carried into effect. Colony after colony and state after state followed in the wake of Old England. Rates were continually reduced, and in nearly

every instance the postoffice revenue was greater at the reduced rate than when it was considerably higher.

In 1874 the International Postal Union was formed and nearly all the postoffices of the civilized world were soon brought into one great group with a uniform rate of five cents.

Several of the nations of Europe have also, in recent years, extended the sphere of the postoffice to the transmission of parcels, one pound to eleven in weight, grouping practically all products in one class and including in one or two groups all their respective towns and villages. The Imperial Parcels Post of Germany carries parcels up to 11 pounds, distances up to 10 miles, for 64 cents, and for all greater distances within the Empire for 12 cents.

Our own postoffice carries paper-covered books from the homes of book-publishers and news-agents to their customers, anywhere within our American empire, in parcels from one pound to a carload, for one cent a pound, and this by express trains. And now we find great railway corporations and groups of corporations giving to each of the stations in ever widening zones, the same uniform grouped rates, sometimes for persons, sometimes for property, almost universally in through business, and not infrequently in way traffic.

Is it not certain that we have discovered here the natural law for the determination of transportation taxes, and is it not time that this law, this best system that can be devised for the good of all engaged in the traffic, should be enforced by the only power to which its execution can be safely entrusted, namely, by the general government? The possibilities of our public transportation service when it is once devoted solely to the public welfare are altogether beyond imagination.

And what is true as to the conveyance of persons and property by tramway and railway is equally true as to the transmission of intelligence by telegraph and telephone. Three years ago, Postmaster-General Wanamaker declared that with the telegraph and the telephone under the control of the postoffice, one-cent letter postage, the world over, 10-cent telegrams, and 3-cent telephone messages would be near at hand.

Add to these low taxes on the transmission of intelligence, similar low and uniform taxes on transportation, on parcels, one cent a pound by express trains, and on ordinary freight, rates varying from $1.20 a ton first-class freight to 40 or 50 cents a ton on sixth class between any two stations in the

country, ordinary travel free, and for special passenger service make the rate now charged for the shortest distance the uniform standard rate for all distances, and we should soon have such a condition of things in this country that the tramp, the pauper, and the criminal would disappear, and with them would go the slum, the poorhouse, and the jail.

"The natural effort of every man to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security," says Adam Smith, "is so powerful a principle that it is alone and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations, although the effect of these obstructions is always more or less to encroach upon its freedom and to diminish its security." If these statements of the great Scotch lover of wisdom be true, what may we not expect from this wonder-working principle when both the inventor and the lawmaker unite for the removal of the natural and legal obstructions to its free action?

We are entering upon a new era, an era when the workers of the world are to be its rulers, when war and hate and robbery are to pass away, and a new standard is to be lifted on which is to be emblazoned the double motto,

"Liberty, Fraternity, Equality."

"Freedom to Trade, Peace on Earth, Goodwill among the Nations."

"Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new, That we have done but the earnest of the things that we shall do:

"If you'll dip into the future but where human eye can see, You'll behold a glorious vision, all the wonders that shall be;

"See the heavens filled with commerce, argosies of magic sails; Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; "Far along the world-wide whisper of the south wind rushing warm, With the standards of the people plunging through the thunder storm;

"Till the war-drum throbs no longer and the battle-flags are furled In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world."

THE PEOPLE'S LAMPS.

BY PROF. FRANK PARSONS.

PART I. ELECTRIC LIGHTING (continued).

$4. The Public Safety calls for municipal control of electric service no less strongly than economy, justice, and the fair diffusion of wealth. In 1890 a committee of the New York Legislature found that "Sixteen deaths were directly traceable to the poor insulation and bad arrangement of the wires of the electric light companies of New York City." Fire Marshal Swene of Chicago reports 231 fires caused by electric light wires and lights during two years (1893-4) in that city. In his address last year to the 28th annual meeting of the National Board of Underwriters President Skelton said: "Concurrent action regarding our greatest enemy, electricity, seems to be imperative. There has been plenty of evidence that fires caused by electricity are growing alarmingly frequent, and inspections show that but few buildings in any community are safely wired. This great and increas ing danger cannot be ignored. It threatens the very life of fire insurance." In Boston we have had emphatic object lessons on the danger of the wires; they not only have originated a number of disastrous fires, but almost always they greatly hinder the subduing of the flames, and injure more firemen than all other perils put together. The firemen

very justly dread them more than they do the fire.

If our cities would take the light works and unite them not only with the water system, but with the fire department also, a great improvement would soon take place in the safety of our cities. The firemen would be careful about the wiring for it is a question of life with them. It would do the regulars good to have something to occupy part of their time, and by a judicious use of their idle hours the city could wire all buildings in proper style and bury the cables underground at a very small expense.

§ 5. Electrical Politics constitute the reverse side of the shield on whose front we have found Extortion. The companies are obliged to give due attention to politics in order to keep their right to obtain an exorbitant profit on light, and they are compelled to make large profits on light in order to give due attention to politics. They begin usually