A prominent citizen of Indianapolis, one of the State judges, told the Toledo papers, in an interview: "The private companies had their gas laid to the city and along the streets several months in advance of the Citizens' Trust, but it did them little good. Everybody said: 'I will wait for the Consumers' Trust.' 'Yes, but we will furnish you gas just as cheap,' said the Indianapolis company; 'why not take it of us?' To this the citizens replied: 'To take gas of you means cheap gas to-day, but high gas to-morrow.' And wait for the gas they all did." The charge to manufacturers was 2-1/2 cents a thousand feet, as against 8 cents, at that time charged at Toledo. There were 12,000 private consumers. Cooking-stoves in Indianapolis were about $12 a year, against $19.50 in Toledo. One of the representatives of the private company declared at a public meeting at Indianapolis that its charges were made such as to give a full return of all the invested capital in three years, as that was the probable life of the supply. A year after the inauguration of the Indianapolis movement a committee of the citizens at Dayton, who had risen against the extortionate prices charged them, investigated the condition of affairs at Indianapolis. They reported that Indianapolis had paid $200,000 on its bonded debt, and was getting ready to pay as much more. The Consumers' Trust supplied between 10,000 and 11,000 consumers, and spent $1,000,000 less than the Dayton private company spent to supply 3000 fewer consumers. The annual charge at Dayton was $54.80; at Indianapolis only $26.80--less than half. When facts like these were brought out, to the demolition of the fictions circulated in Toledo, the answer was characteristic. The "organ" could not deny the statements, but it fell upon the citizen through whose generosity the information had been got for the people, and assailed his private character in articles which, one of the daily papers declared, editorially, "would almost, if not quite, justify him in shooting their author on sight." This newspaper charged the city natural-gas trustees with being "rotten to the core," and with every variation of phrase possible to its exuberant rhetoric sounded the changes upon their official career as a "big steal," "fostered by deception, falsehood, and skull-duggery." It sought to intimidate the Legislature and the courts when they failed to enact or construe laws against the people. It said: "Law-makers, judges, and others may feel the force of this element when the proper time comes and political preferment is sought."