90 



Indui^trial and Material Progress 



hand the supply of water. In 1851, this commission purchased all the 

 property and rights of the old stock company and proceeded to con- 

 struct the works by whcih the city is still supplied. 



Next to a supply of water, nothing now seems to us more essential 

 than a supply of light for our streets. What a hardship we should 

 think it to be left for a single night without the comfort and protec- 

 tion of well lighted streets. And yet we only need to go bacl^ a few 

 years to find dim and smoky lamps in the place of the brilliant gas- 

 lights, and not very many years more to find our city with no lights at 

 all. In 181v*, Sir Walter Scott wrote home from London that ^* there 

 is a crazy man here, who is trying to light London with smoke. " The 

 crazy man succeeded, and in 1813 London was lighted with gas. In 

 this country the experiment was first tried in IS'-^O in Baltimore, but 

 failed. It was successfully introduced in Boston in 1822. In New 

 York the first gas company was chartered in 1823, but it was not till 

 1827 that the lighting went into successful operation. The Albany 

 Gas Co. was chartered in 1841, and the streets were first lighted in the 

 winter of 1845. Street lamps preceded gas, and when introduced 

 were hailed as a wonderful advance. In the old colonial times, when 

 the little city was on the outskirts of civilization, and fears of the 

 treacherous French and Indians kept them on the alert, the orders 

 from the authorities were, that at the ringing of the alarm bell, every 

 body should get a candle in his window^ so that the patrol could see 

 what they were about, and detect the skulking enemies. Just a century 

 ago, May 19, 1780, was the famous dark day, which covered with its 

 dreadful pall the whole of New England. And in the Connecticut 

 Assembly when it grew too dark to attend to business, Abraham Dav- 

 enport moved that candles be brought in and that they go on with the 

 debate irrespective of the day of judgment. The incident reminds 

 us that at that time even public assemblies were lighted by candles. 

 What an idea it gives us of the change a century has wrought, when 

 the candle has given way to the lamp, and the lamp faded before the 

 gas, and the gas is preparing to hide its diminished head before the 

 glories of the electric light ; when from a flag-staff on the highest pin- 

 nacle of the new capitol, one single electric globe shall dispense light 

 to every street, and enable us to go on with our occupations by night 

 as well as by day. 



2. Houses and Furniture. 

 The immigrants from Holland came for commercial rather than 

 political reasons. They opened up with the Indians a trade, which 



