MICHIGAN ROADS AND FORESTS. 



9 



Its operations in Germany began with the pub- 

 lic lighting of Hanover in 1825, up to which date 

 the streets of the town were lighted with oil. 

 From 1825 to 1849 the Continental had a mon- 

 opoly in Berlin and elsewhere, but the high prices 

 charged induced the Berlin city fathers to start 

 a gas plant of their own. Competition went on 

 until both companies were threatened with de- 

 struction by the perfecting of the electric light. 

 Then came the incandescent burner, the stock- 

 ing, as it is called in Germany. The Continental 

 now lights the center of Berlin, charging for its 

 supply 12.35 pfennigs a cubic meter, as against 

 * 40 pfennigs, the cost of lighting by electricity. 

 So perfect have the company's incandescent 

 lamps now become that one of the large open 

 places of the city is being lighted with them in- 

 stead of electricity. 



The penny in the slot meter was slow to be 

 adopted in Berlin, but it has become popular in 

 the last three or four years and there are now 

 50,000 in use. The competition between the Con- 

 tinental and the municipal plant ceased in 1901, 

 when a common price was agreed on. The Con- 

 tinental has still a monopoly in the center of the 

 city, paying an annual rent or subsidy of $125,000 

 to the municipality, besides possessing long term 

 franchises in the suburbs. 



Notwithstanding the rent and the similar con- 

 ditions under which it works in other Continental 

 and German towns, it is able to pay a dividend 

 of 8 per cent on a capital of $25,000,000. The 

 lowest wage it pays its unskilled workmen is 

 about a dollar a day, and its skilled workmen 

 $1.2"). It is contemplating the introduction of an 

 eight or nine hour day. 



Nothing serious can be alleged against the mu- 

 nicipal system of gas supply, for though it has an 

 apparently cumbrous staff, including four man- 

 agers, two of whom are jurists and two engin- 

 eers, with a multitude of technical experts, this 

 is due to the fact that it manufactures and builds 

 all its accessories, reservoirs, plant and piping. 

 In the case of the Continental these accessories 

 are put into the hands of other private com- 

 panies, and money and work are thus circulated 

 more freely among the community. 



The street car system of Berlin is private, with 

 the exception of two lines, to Trepow and to 

 Pankow, in which the municipality owns about 

 half the shares. The company running these mu- 

 nicipal lines, Siemens & Halske, binds itself to 

 make good any failure to pay dividends. A note- 

 worthy feature in its administration is that it is 

 managed by a council of five, including two mem- 

 bers of the municipal corporation and a director 

 of Siemens & Halske. 



The line is thus practically municipal and suf- 

 fers from being so in that its plant has been al- 

 lowed to become old fashioned and that it shows 

 no intention of meeting up to date requirements. 

 The Berlin municipality is about to start four 

 electric lines in competition with the main sys- 

 tem of Berlin the privately owned and managed 

 street car company. 



This company leaves little to be desired, save 

 possibly in the matter of speed, but here it is 

 limited by the Prussian police regulations, which 

 up to last year did not allow the cars to travel 

 at more than ten kilometers (say six miles) an 

 hour, though this has since been slightly in- 

 creased and with an immediate growth in the 

 number of passengers as a consequence. 



The company has a capital of $20,000,000 and 

 for the last four years has paid a dividend of be- 

 tween 7 and 8 per cent. In 1905 it carried 350,- 

 000,000 passengers, or 17,000.000 more than in the 

 year previous. The income in the same year was 

 $8,500,000, of which $2,300,000 was net profit. The 

 cost of electricity was about $1,000.000 over about 

 5,070 meters of rail. About 8,500 persons are 

 employed. Cars number 2,433. 



The company pays an annual subsidy to the 

 municipalities, namely to Berlin, 8 per cent of the 

 gross income (amounting to $556.500 in 1905), 

 and a share of the net profit ($94,500 in 1905). 

 To Charlottenburg and Schoneberg (suburban 

 municipalities) the company pays a rent of $1 

 for each meter of double track. The company 

 also bears the expense of paving, asphalting, 

 maintenance and cleansing of streets. On the ex- 

 piry of the agreement in 1920 the system and ap- 



purtenances pass into the possession of the mu- 

 nicipalities. 



In consequence of more practical organization 

 and more intelligent direction the private system 

 is in a position to do the work more economically 

 and satisfactorily to the public than the munici- 

 pal. It is superior to municipal working in re- 

 spect to rapidity of decision and energy, because 

 it does not require so complicated an establish- 

 ment nor need entertain the many considerations 

 with regard to other municipal interests which 

 hamper municipalities. 



The public is better served, because the im- 

 provement of the system and consequently the 

 increase of the traffic are the sole aim of the 

 private company. The cost of administration is 

 cheaper in the case of a company and the fares 

 therefore are lower. 



The dividend in 1903 was 8 per cent; 1904, r i l / 2 

 per cent ; 19C5, 7^4 per cent. The indemnity to 

 shareholders on the handing over of the system 

 consists in the creation of an amortization fund 

 by annual reserves from the profits, sufficient to 

 indemnify the shareholders on the expiry of the 

 municipal contracts. The amortization fund 

 amounted in 1905 to $4,375,000. 



The Berlin Electrical Works Company, with a 

 capital of about $20,000,000 (increased recently 

 by $10,000,000), has a monopoly from the city, 

 though so far limited that an opposition company 

 may be at any day started if the municipality 

 consents. For this franchise the company pays 

 a certain percentage of its profits, amounting in 

 1905 to $925,000, which went into the municipal 

 treasury, without the city having either risk or 

 trouble. 



The company has been at work more than ten 

 years without the municipality having shown any 

 desire to take it over. The present contract runs 

 till 1914, when it will most probably be renewed. 

 Director Datterer is very emphatic as to the 

 advantages of private company working. Ac- 

 cording to him a municipality has not the free- 

 dom or facility of working that a company has. 

 There are competing claims on its funds and a 

 really pressing want may have to be postponed a 

 year or two or three in favor of some equally or 

 still more pressing claim. It cannot venture, as 

 a company must, to sink large sums in plant and 

 machinery which some improvement or invention 

 may suddenly render obsolete. 



Its decisions will be passed too slowly or too 

 hastily, and persons must have a voice in them ! 

 who may be unqualified by business experience 

 or technical knowledge. He sees no objection to 

 the simultaneous working of more than one com- 

 pany in a town, provided, of course, that proper 

 protective measures are adopted. 



In Vienna there are five competing companies. 

 Some large towns in Germany possess their own 

 electrical plants, Frankfort and Breslau among 

 the number. These are not unsuccessful, because 

 they happen to be run by business men in places 

 where the enervating bureaucratic spirit is not so 

 strong as in Prussian cities. 



Germany is scientifically governed from above 

 downward, as a regiment is governed from the 

 colonel downward. The authorities in effect say 

 to the people, "What you want is scientific, not I 

 popular, government. Now we have a scientific 

 plan, and if you accurately follow its ten thou- 

 sand paragraphs you must logically be happy. If 

 you are not happy, well, then, we regret the 

 necessity, but you must be fined or go to jail." 



Part of this scientific government consists in a 1 

 socio-political theory in accordance with which 

 the town authorities endeavor to provide against i 

 pauperization by giving, so far as may be, a life 

 occupation to the working classes. Once a man 

 is in municipal employ he regards his present and 

 future as assured, and the result is that in the 

 majority of cases he ceases to work as attentively 

 and energetically as he would if he knew that he 

 might be dismissed at short notice and that the 

 success or failure of the concern depended in 

 some measure on his exertions. 



If this view of the German attitude is correct, 

 it shows Germany in a new and very socialistic 

 light, for it represents her as municipalizing 

 everything she possibly can in order to meet, 

 though without openly admitting it, the demands 



more municipally employed workmen there are, 

 the fewer Social Democrats; that would seem to 

 be the reasoning. 



CURIOSITIES OF MEASUREMENT. 



The standard yard prevails throughout the 

 United Kingdom, but the length of the Eng- 

 lish, Scots and Irish mile is different in each, 

 vyhich is the more curious seeing that the Eng- 

 lish and American miles are identical. But 

 the occasional local variations in our English 

 acre are even more remarkable. These were 

 perhaps originally due to the inexactitudes of 

 ancient land surveying, which was compara- 

 tively of such a free and easy description that 

 the acres of neighboring counties, not to say 

 adjacent parishes, sometimes varied. 



A book published in the reign of Edward VI. 

 gives the following curiously naive instruc- 

 tions on the subject: "Stand at the door of a 

 church on Sunday and bid sixteen men to stop, 

 tall ones and small ones, as they happen to 

 pass out. Then make them put their left feet 

 one behind the other, and the length thus ob- 

 tained shall be a right and lawful rood to mea- 

 sure the land with, and the sixteenth part of it 

 shall be a right and lawful foot." 



This is almost laughable; but we have only 

 to apply to one of the older dictionaries to find 

 that anything like exactness, whether of defini- 

 tion or of fact, is quite a modern scientific 

 development. And the story of the acre is 

 a case in point. It was supposed to have 

 been reduced to a common standard In 1305, 

 but it was not until 1824 that we enacted the 

 statute acre of 4,840 square yards. 



With the loose system of measurement pre- 

 vailing for the greater part of that long in- 

 terval, it is not surprising that the so-called 

 "acre" was too often what the local wiseacres 

 happened to make of it. By long use and 

 wont it seems probable that the discrepancies 

 thus arising occasionally crystalized into cus- 

 toms, of which some examples still survive. A 

 Welsh acre was formerly twice as large as an 

 English one, while a Scottish acre is larger 

 than ours by more than 1,000 square yards. 



According to authority, there are seven dif- 

 ferent measures still in use by which the acre 

 may be variously defined. Lancashire has 

 within her borders acres measured on a custo- 

 mary local scale, while the so-called Cheshire 

 acre is even larger than that of its Welsh 

 neighbor. 



BANK OF ENGLAND PATERNAL. 



In the old days the Bank of England was 

 paternal in its treatment of its clerks. One young 

 fellow was distinguished only for his zeal as a 

 member of the volunteer corps which now is de- 

 funct. His clerkly services were negligible and 

 neglected, but when it was brought to the, notice 

 of the directors they remembered his martial 

 ardor and gave him a nice little sinecure. An- 

 other clerk was reported to them as a really 

 clever amateur painter. They saw his picture's. 

 "It is a pity that such talent should be wasted over 

 ledgers." was the kindly verdict. So they gave 

 him a room at the bank for use as a studio and 

 appointed him to the post of superintending the 

 burning of canceled bank notes every Friday ? c 

 ternoon. 



of the socialistic elements in the empire. The 



Capt. Alexander A. Johnson, of Ganges town- 

 ship. Allegan county, who died recently, was one 

 of the founders of Singapore, now a deserted 

 Lake Michigan port. There was at one time an 

 extensive lumber trade out of Singapore harbor, 

 but witli the passing of the forests this died out 

 and the town was deserted. Singapore at one 

 time possessed several stores, a bank and a tav- 

 ern and gave promise of becoming a thriving 

 village. 



Log-lifting operations are to be continued 

 on the Muskegon river this year by the Mus- 

 kegon Log Lifting & Operating Company in 

 spite of the edict of Judge Sessions that the 

 logs in the river belong to the farmers who 

 own lands along the waterway. The decision 

 was an important one, and has been carried 

 to the supreme court, but the log operating 

 people have effected a temporary compromise. 



