158 BULLETIN 102, VOL. 1, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



gas plant, present in all cities, is the nearest approach to the needs of 

 the situation; although under present conditions such plants provide 

 only a small fraction of the community needs and furnish even that 

 fraction in an obsolete manner and at an excessive price. Such gas 

 plants are the logical points of attachment for the upgi'owth of 

 municipal by-product fuel plants. We may infer that the gas plants 

 have not as yet gone into this larger field of fuel service because of 

 their anomalous position, being neither private enterprise nor public 

 enterprise, having their incentive for improvement removed by the 

 public with no activating motive substituted in its place. 



But it is not the function of this paper to linger over the matter 

 of public utilities longer than to emphasize the obstacle that the 

 present type of administration interposes in the way of fuel progiess. 

 But even accepting a lame horse, there may still be hope of progress; 

 indeed, exercise in the direction of progress may be just the thing to 

 bring the whole pub He utility conception into good health. If so, the 

 gain would be immeasurable, for few other outcomes are so necessary 

 to the welfare of the common run of men. So, even as the matter 

 stands, the situation has considerable possibilities if the organization 

 concerned with the transportation of energy will serve as a coordinating 

 influence, in recognition of the fact that domestic fuel is an integral 

 part of the energy problem as a whole. Domestic fuel, in point of 

 fact, concerns transportation directly, for proper utiHzation through 

 increased recovery of energy will cut do^\Ti one-haK or more the car- 

 riage of the coal involved. Moreover, full utihzation, whether at the 

 distributive points or at the production centers, needs to be brought 

 to a common basis of practice and effectiveness. Besides, the pro- 

 vision of an adequate municipal fuel supply would of necessity serve 

 an attendant fringe of gas-fired industries, thus necessitating a balance 

 against the type of electrical service also brought into the community 

 under the auspices of a common-carrier system. Hence, on several 

 counts, the central transportation administration becomes the logical 

 overseer of this pendant activity.^ 



The energy-transmission organization may quite appropriately 

 assume the duty of stimulating municipalities toward attaching a 

 centralized fuel service to their gas manuf actiu'e. Under the present 

 regime municipalities have no standards against which they can 

 measure the attainments of their public utiUties, no means of knowing 

 what correct practice is, nor what is now attainable. The central 

 organization can provide this standard, which can be made to serve 

 in lieu of the competitive spur which holds business enterprise in the 

 line of progress. In this respect the central organization will (a) 

 estabhsh a model plant to demonstrate what can be accomphshed, 



1 If the power problem is left in abeyance, the domestic fuel matter may still progress, though less 

 rapidly, through the stimulus of a more specific activity. 



