|6 CONSTRUCTION AND MANAGEMENT OF SMALL GASWORKS. 



irrespective of consumption. The time limit might also be 

 deleted, because the company will stand quite as much in 

 need of a paying business in twenty years' time as now. 

 As it is, if the consumer chooses to drop the consumption 

 to a mere trifle, at the expiration of the prescribed or agreed 

 time, there is no remedy. There should be power not only 

 to stop supplies to the unprofitable customer, but to recover 

 the cost of the service pipe. 



A great deal has been made, in Acts of Parliament and 

 elsewhere, of the power of the company to cut off the supply 

 in the event of default as to payment. It is difficult to see 

 where there is any special privilege in this matter, as it is open 

 to any private trader to refuse to supply a customer whose 

 credit is not sound. The threat to discontinue, as a means 

 of bringing pressure to bear on the customer, is now of no 

 value. At the time when no other equally convenient agent 

 was available, it was certainly a power in the land. But if 

 carried into effect it now causes little or no inconvenience. 

 Some excuse may formerly have existed for hampering gas 

 with conditions as to supply, price and quality; but such 

 are absolutely unfair, when there is a free market, in all 

 these respects, for competing agents. 



The sections relating to public lighting are all drawn in 

 favour of the local authority, at the expense of the com- 

 pany, and, like those just mentioned, are so indefinitely 

 and ambiguously worded as to admit of more than one 

 construction. When a gas company applies for parliamen- 

 tary powers, the local authority usually takes the opportunity 

 to get some special concession, in addition to the already 

 onerous provisions of the model Acts, such as a stipulation 

 that the price charged for the public lights should not 

 exceed the lowest charge to any other consumer, or that all 

 (he roads in the district must be furnished, if desired, with 



