renders it necessary to break the pavement and dig
down to the mains much oftener than is required for any other of our
underground furniture. Nothing would seem more evident than that the
number of these pipes to be laid should be the fewest consistent with
the proper supply of the district, yet it is a fact that for a time two
competing steam companies were permitted to run riot in the streets of
lower New York, until the weaker one succumbed "to over-pressure." Yet
it is scarcely to be doubted, that if another rival company were to ask
for a permit to operate in the district now monopolized by the New York
Steam Company, public opinion would tend to favor the granting of the
permit "because it would give more competition." It is to be hoped that
before these great systems for the distribution from central stations of
various necessities reach much greater proportions, the public will
become educated enough to perceive the folly of attempting to regulate
them by competition.

The necessity for this will be more, rather than less, apparent with the
use of underground instead of overhead wires. The cost of placing wires
in subways is far beyond the cost of stringing them on poles, and if we
are obliged to build our subways large enough to accommodate all the
rival wires which may be offered, we have a herculean task upon our
hands.

The great question of the monopoly of land can be merely touched in this
connection. While the fact that land is natural wealth must be freely
acknowledged, it is only where population is most dense that any great
monopoly appears in its ownership. The principle is well established,
indeed, that private ownership of land cannot stand in the way of the
public good. When a railway is to be built, any man who refuses to sell
right of way to the railway company at a reasonable price may have it
judicially condemned and taken from him. We have already noted in the
chapter on railway monopolies the injustice of permitting a single
person or corporation to control and own any especially necessary means
of communication, as a mountain pass or a long and expensive bridge, and
the same principle is apparent in connection with the railway terminals
in our large cities. The enormous expense attendant upon securing right
of way for an entrance to the heart of the city, makes it a very
difficult matter for any new company to obtain a terminus there, except
by securing running rights over the tracks of a