10 BEGINNINGS OF THE METER BUSINESS 



tones and railroads, and meter rates were established with par- 

 ticular reference to such large consumers. Meter rates estab- 

 lished to cover the business of supplying a few large consumers 

 do not necessarily give much aid in arriving at a fair schedule 

 of rates to be applied to single houses. 



In other respects, these early rates reflected different ideas 

 from those that are now held in regard to many matters. Early 

 rate schedules, partial and one-sided as they were, based on the 

 experiences of the time and not upon any study of the whole 

 situation, have persisted in American water works practice to 

 an extraordinary extent. Sometimes these early rates were 

 written into long term contracts that tended to preserve them. 

 Sometimes only inertia and perhaps, still more often, perplexity 

 as to what would be a fair schedule of rates to adopt in place of 

 the old one may be the final determining influences that pre- 

 vent breaking away from the old and unjust schedules. 



Fig. i shows the percentage of services that were metered 

 in each of a number of American water-works systems prior to 

 1900. It is compiled from information in the three editions of the 

 American Water Works Manual, 1888, 1890 and 1897, by M. N. 

 Baker, of the " Engineering News," and from a paper by George 

 I. Bailey, in the " Engineering News/'* giving the statistics of 

 metering in 1900, with admirable comments. The plotting 

 may not be complete, in that there may have been other systems, 

 especially small ones, that had meters to as great a relative extent 

 as some of the systems that are shown., 



Worcester, Atlanta, and Yonkers were the pioneer systems 

 in using meters, but Fall River, Utica, Providence, Pawtucket, 

 and Newton were not far behind. 



In the last sixteen years the increase in the use of meters 

 has been rapid and the number of completely metered systems 

 at the present time is very much greater. At the present rate 

 of increase the time is not far distant when water meters will 

 be practically universal in the United States. 



* Vol. 45, p. 279. 



