Although gas-lighting was born in England it soon began to receive attention elsewhere. In 1815 the first attempt to provide a gas-works in America was made in Philadelphia; but progress was slow, with the result that Baltimore and New York led in the erection of gas-works. There are on record many protests against proposals which meant progress in lighting. These are amusing now, but they indicate the inertia of the people in such matters. When Bollman was projecting a plan for lighting Philadelphia by means of piped gas, a group of prominent citizens submitted a protest in 1833 which aimed to show that the consequences of the use of gas were appalling. But this protest failed and in 1835 a gas-plant was founded in Philadelphia. Thus gas-lighting, which to Sir Walter Scott was a "pestilential innovation" projected by a madman, weathered its early difficulties and grew to be a mighty industry. Continued improvements and increasing output not only altered the course of civilization by increased and adequate lighting but they reduced the cost of lighting over the span of the nineteenth century to a small fraction of its initial cost. Think of the city of Philadelphia in 1800, with a population of about fifty thousand, dependent for its lighting wholly upon candles and oil-lamps! Washington's birthday anniversary was celebrated in 1817 with a grand ball attended by five hundred of the elite. An old report of the occasion states that the room was lighted by two thousand wax-candles. The cost of this lighting was a hundred times the cost of as much light for a similar occasion at the present time. Can one imagine the present complex activities of a city like Philadelphia with nearly two million inhabitants to exist under the lighting conditions of a century ago? To-day there are more than fifty thousand street lamps in the city--one for each inhabitant of a century ago. Of these street lamps about twenty-five thousand burn gas. This single instance is representative of gas-lighting which initiated the "light age" and nursed it through the vicissitudes of youth. The consumption of gas has grown in the United States during this time to three billion cubic feet per day. For strictly illuminating purposes in 1910 nearly one hundred billion cubic feet were used. This country has been blessed with large supplies of natural gas; but as this fails new oil-fields are constantly being discovered, so that as far as raw materials are concerned the future of gas-lighting is assured for a long time to come.