the new illuminant known as kerosene. But it was the mechanism of
city transportation that would have looked the strangest in our
eyes. New York City had built the world's first horse-car line in
1832, and since that year this peculiarly American contrivance
has had the most extended development. In 1870, indeed,
practically every city of any importance had one or more railways
of this type. New York possessed thirty different companies, each
operating an independent system. In Philadelphia, Chicago, St.
Louis, and San Francisco the growth of urban transportation had
been equally haphazard. The idea of combining the several street
railways into one comprehensive corporation had apparently
occurred to no one. The passengers, in their peregrinations
through the city, had frequently to pay three or four fares;
competition was thus the universal rule. The mechanical equipment
similarly represented a primitive state of organization. Horses
and mules, in many cases hideous physical specimens of their
breeds, furnished the motive power. The cars were little
"bobtailed" receptacles, usually badly painted and more often
than not in a desperate state of disrepair. In many cities the
driver presided as a solitary autocrat; the passengers on
entrance deposited their coins in a little fare box. At night
tiny oil lamps made the darkness visible; in winter time
shivering passengers warmed themselves by pulling their coat
collars and furs closely about their necks and thrusting their
lower members into a heap of straw, piled almost a foot deep on
the floor.

Who would have thought, forty years ago, that the lighting of
these dark and dirty streets and the modernization of these local
railway systems would have given rise to one of the most