7 companies charge $1.00 per thousand cubic feet. 32 " " 1.50 " " " " 24 " " 1.75 " " " " 148 " " 2.00 " " " " 57 " " 2.25 " " " " 145 " " 2.50 " " " " 20 companies charge 2.75 per thousand cubic feet. 86 " " 3.00 " " " " 25 " " 3.50 " " " " 19 " " 4.00 " " " " 120 companies charge various other prices per thousand cubic feet. According to the same authority these companies in 1886 produced 23,050,706,000 cubic feet of gas, for which they received $40,744,673, an average price per M. of $1.76-71/100. According to the statement of good authorities, gas can be manufactured at a cost of 50 to 75 cents per M. in this country. Prof. James, in his work before quoted, says: "In England at the present time gas is manufactured at a net cost of 30 cents per thousand feet; some works in New England now manufacture it for 38 cents per thousand feet to the holder." The President of the American Gas-Light Association is quoted as stating in an address before the Association that the cost of the gas delivered to consumers by the South Metropolitan Company of London in 1883 was 39.65 cents per thousand, and figuring by the relative cost of coal and labor there and here, he stated that gas could be delivered in New York at a cost of 65 cents per thousand. In Germany the price of gas to consumers varies from 61 cents in Cologne to $1.02 in Berlin. Very recent improvements in processes have greatly cheapened the cost of manufacture. Mr. Henry Woodall, the engineer of the Leeds, England, gas-works, states that coal-gas costs in the holder 22 cents per thousand. Of nineteen companies doing business in principal English cities, the average rate charged consumers is 521/2 cents, and the average cost of manufacture is 37-1/3 cents. The history of the gas monopoly is repeating itself in the matter of electric lighting. The smaller cities of the country, in their haste to "boom," are ready to grant a liberal franchise to the first firm or company which offers to supply an electric-lighting system, trusting to future competition to regulate prices, a resource that must prove of no avail. Nor are the men in power in our larger cities any wiser. The city of New York is taking every means to encourage the operation of rival electric-light companies, and is letting yearly contracts for street-lighting to the lowest bidder. It is true that competition is active just now, but it requires no far-seeing eye to discern the inevitable combination and consolidation among the companies.