The completion of the line to the city was not the completion of the enterprise. Mains had still to be laid in the streets, and house connections made. At every step, now as before, unrelenting opposition did all that could be conceived of--in the courts, the Legislature, the city government, the money-market--to block municipal self-help. Great numbers of the citizens desired to change from the private companies to the city. Over 7500 consumers were at one time, in 1891, calling upon the city to supply them.[542] The litigation which was kept up, and the defeat of the attempt of the city to sell its natural-gas bonds in the open market, had exhausted the funds at the disposal of the city trustees. But they showed a readiness of resource equal, with the help of the people, to all these emergencies, and proving that public enterprise can more than hold its own in the competition with private enterprise. Contractors were got to pipe the streets by sections, and take for pay the pledge of the income earned by the pipes so laid. In other cases people wanting the gas were willing to advance a part of the cost. The same contractor who had faith enough in the city to build the main line from the gas-fields and take the bonds while they were under fire volunteered in the same way to build the submerged lines across the Maumee River, and ten miles of mains within the city. This was done at a moment when otherwise the enterprise must have come to a stop, and the name of this patriotic contractor is given to the public by the trustees in their annual report with words of gratitude.