i82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



parties using wires. Their operations are conducted in two hundred 

 and eighty-five offices, allowing only one office to each telephone com- 

 pany. But, as each telephonic subscriber requires a separate instru- 

 ment, there are, practically, as many offices as subscribers, and the 

 above number must be increased by several thousands. As each 

 of these thousands of telegraphic and telephonic offices has from one 

 to several hundred wires running from it to some other point, one real- 

 izes what a gigantic net-work of wires has been woven over us ; and, 

 when we add the testimony of the senses, the stupendousness of the 

 encroachment becomes still more apparent. From roofs of private 

 buildings and from poles in public streets the meshes depend, each pole 

 strung with from to one to one hundred and sixty or even more wires. 

 At the corner of Wall and Water Streets, for instance, is a pole with 

 one hundred and ninety-six insulating points. Be these public ways 

 wide or narrow matters not, so far as encroachment is concerned. 

 Some of the largest poles have been erected in the narrowest ways. In 

 Fulton Street, west of Broadway, for example, there are poles seventy- 

 eight inches in circumference. In other places poles sixty and sixty- 

 four inches in circumference have been placed, and a diameter of a foot 

 and a half is common. 



Now, all these facts and figures bear startling testimony to the ex- 

 tent to which a system of encroachment upon public and private rights 

 may silently proceed when unchecked. When to this thought we add 

 a recollection of the instances of danger, obstruction, and accident oc- 

 casioned to life, limb, and property by wires and poles, it must be ad- 

 mitted that a system, whose benefits can hardly be overestimated, has 

 nevertheless become, through an utter disregard of the changed condi- 

 tions brought about by time, obnoxious in its operation. In the lan- 

 guage of modern thought, it has failed to adjust itself to its changed 

 external relations. It is out of correspondence with its environment. 

 This want of correspondence in the case of a human being is called 

 death. In the case of the system under discussion, instinct has taught 

 the layman to call it a public nuisance, which, if so, is theoretically 

 about the same thing as death, inasmuch as, in the eye of the law, that 

 which is a public nuisance has forfeited the right to exist. That this 

 lay opinion is right and that the system is, per se, a, public nuisance, is 

 a matter of elementary law. 



How comes it, then, that such a condition of things has arisen ? Ask 

 the offending corporations, and they will tell you that it is a legalized 

 nuisance, and point to legislative enactments which they claim legalize 

 their acts. It becomes necessary, then, to examine these enactments. 

 In a magazine article it is of course impossible to review the laws of 

 all the States. We propose to confine ourselves, therefore, to those 

 affecting New York city, which is the longest-suffering and most in- 

 terested of our municipalities. 



The Legislature of the State of New York, in 1848, authorized the 



