Again, not only is competition of this sort sure to fail, but the attempt to establish it is very harmful. To say nothing of the expense and waste of wealth which is involved when rival companies are allowed to stretch their wires and establish their extensive central stations in the same district, it is everywhere acknowledged that the multiplication of wires overhead is a crying evil and danger. Are we to double and treble it, then, by permitting rival companies to place their wires wherever they please? It is evident that the temporary rivalry which we obtain in this way is bought at much too great a cost. What is true of electric street light wires is equally true of the vastly greater multitude of wires which belong to our rapidly growing system of domestic lighting, and the telegraph, telephone, and messenger service. Surely no man knoweth the beginning or the end of the network which is woven over our heads, and which, besides all the useful wires already enumerated, is full of "dead" wires, many of them strung by defunct or irresponsible companies, who would never have been allowed to obstruct the streets if they had not been "competing" for the business. Can there be any doubt that it is the height of folly to continue this work, and that the only rational way of entrusting electric service to incorporated companies is to permit but a single company to operate in a district and control prices by some other means than competition? We have the beginnings of other monopolies in our city economies which are destined to become much more important, but to which we need only refer. Steam for supplying heat and power is beginning to be distributed from great central stations, through mains laid underground, to all parts of the surrounding district. The necessity for frequent repairs and stoppage of leaks renders it necessary to break the pavement and dig down to the mains much oftener than is required for any other of our underground furniture. Nothing would seem more evident than that the number of these pipes to be laid should be the fewest consistent with the proper supply of the district, yet it is a fact that for a time two competing steam companies were permitted to run riot in the streets of lower New York, until the weaker one succumbed "to over-pressure." Yet it is scarcely to be doubted, that if another rival company were to ask for a permit to operate in the district now monopolized by the New York Steam Company, public opinion would tend to favor the granting of the permit "because it would give more competition." It is to be hoped that before these great systems for the distribution from central stations of various necessities reach much greater proportions, the public will become educated enough to perceive the folly of attempting to regulate them by competition.