[55] The loss included $25 damage to two engines which cost new $24,000; $2,000 damage to six boilers, new cost $30,000; $210 water-tank, cost new $350; $500 damage to pipes, valves and fittings, which cost new $10,500; material in store-room worth $2,000, a total loss; $4,800 loss of two tension carriages used for taking up slack of the cable. These tension carriages could very easily have been restored. This loss, $4,800, and the $2,000 stock loss, deducted from the total of $9,375, leaves a total loss of $2,575 to the machinery of a plant estimated to have cost $115,842. [56] As late as November 13, 1906, seven months after the fire, the San Francisco Call published an editorial article on the trolley permits which showed that even then their nature was not fully understood. The Call said: "The insolent disregard of public rights in the streets by the United Railroads is inspired, of course, by ulterior purpose to entrench the corporation in the possession of privileges, permits or franchises granted at a time of stress and confusion whose legality may and probably will be questioned later. "The Call does not desire to assume an attitude of hindering or hampering progress. We recognize fully that every new street-car line adds materially to the value of property within its tributary territory. In a word, the growth of a city or a neighborhood is, to a considerable degree, dependent on facilities for urban transit. "But it does not follow from these considerations that franchises should be granted for nothing to any and every applicant who is able to construct a street railway. The right to use the streets is the most valuable privilege possessed by a municipality. It should be made to yield a corresponding revenue. "All this might seem so obvious as scarcely to require statement, but in practice the principles here laid down have been virtually disregarded in San Francisco. In no instance was there more flagrant disregard of public rights than in the wholesale grants of permits or franchises to construct overhead trolley lines made after the fire.