have very few more points to bring
before you. I spoke only last week so much about the electric light that I
have very little to say on that point. High-tension currents are used for
electric lighting in America, and all wires are carried overhead along the
streets. A more hideous contrivance was probably never invented since the
world was created than the system of carrying wires overhead through the
magnificent streets and cities in America. They spend thousands upon
thousands of pounds in beautifying their cities with very fine buildings,
and then they disfigure them all by carrying down the pavements the most
villainous-looking telegraph posts that ever were constructed. The
practice is carried to such an extent, that down Broadway in New York
there are no less than six distinct lines of poles; and through the city
of New York there are no less than thirty-two separate and distinct
companies carrying all their wires through the streets of the city. How
the authorities have stood it so long I cannot make out. They object to
underground wires--why, one cannot tell. It is something like taking a
horse to the pond--you cannot make him drink. So it is with these
telephone companies: the public of America and the Town Councils have been
trying to force the telephone and telegraph companies to put their wires
underground, but they are the horses that are led to the pool, and they
will not drink. It is said that the Town Council of Philadelphia have
issued most stringent orders that on the first of January next, men with
axes and tools are to start out and cut down every pole in the city. It is
all very well to threaten; but my impression is that any member of Town
Council or any individual of Philadelphia who attempts to do such a thing
will be lynched by the first telephone subscriber he meets.

This practice of running overhead wires has great disadvantages when the
wires are used for electric-lighting purposes as well as for ordinary
telephone or telegraph purposes. No doubt the high-tension system can be
carried out overhead with economy; but where overhead wires carrying these
heavy currents exist in the neighborhood of telephone circuits, there is
every possible liability to accident; and in my short trip I came across
seven distinct cases of offices being destroyed by fire, of test boxes
being utterly ruined, of a whole house being gutted, and of various
accidents, all clearly traceable to contacts arising from the f