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Show GAS IN TWO CITIES. Boston and New York arc illustrating illustrat-ing two kinds of relationships between be-tween public service corporations and the people. In New York the Consolidated Con-solidated Gas Company stands in a position of square hostility to the public. pub-lic. It charges as much as it can, and every reduction in rates is a matter of brute legal force. The company com-pany submits when it thinks there is nothing else to be done, but if it sees a possible chance of escape it fights the cut in the courts. Just now it is fighting a law reducing its charges .from a dollar to eighty cents per thousand feet on tl)c ground that to compel it to furnish gas at such a price would be depriving it of its property pro-perty without due process of law. It maintains that eighty cents would not pay interest on its investment, and it has succeeded in convincing a Master Mas-ter in Chancery appointed by a United Unit-ed States Circuit Court that this contention con-tention is sound. According to his calculations such a rate would allow the company, only 2.8 per cent profit on its capital, including the value of its franchises and good-will, or 3.6 per cent on its investment with those items excluded. At the very time when the Mastc was presenting an exhaustive report showing by a wealth of figures that an eighty cent rate would mean confiscation, con-fiscation, the Boston Consolidated Gas Company was voluntarily reducing reduc-ing its charges to that figure, and at the same time preparing to increase its dividends from eight to nine per cent. This was the fourth five-cent reduction since the consolidation of the Boston companies two years be-" fore. In Boston the people and the gas company are not enemies, but partners. The law makes it an object ob-ject to the corporation to manage its business economically and to treat its customers well. It is allowed to charge ninety cents per thousand feet, and to pay dividends of seven per cent at that price. If it wants to pay eight per cent dividends it must sell gas at eighty-five cents. That is what it has been doing' recently. Tor every increase of one per cent in the dividends it must cut five cents from! the price. Thus it it estopped from saying in cnirt that low rate mean confiscation. Low rates and high dividends go together. No doubt in time the companyy will find it feasible feas-ible to pay ten per cent dividends with seventy-five cent gas, while its New York namesake is finding Fed-cral Fed-cral courts to believe its pathetic plea that eighty-cent gas means bankrupt-, cy. Collier's.. n t . |