Toledo knew it was building wisely, and every day brought new proof that it had builded better than it knew. Its saving was great, but that was the least of its gains. It escaped tyranny and extortion and other wrongs which fell upon communities in plain sight, which had not the wit and virtue to establish their independence. When the city pipe line was opened in 1891 the city began supplying gas to its citizens at 8 cents a thousand for houses. The private companies were charging 12 cents a thousand, or 50 per cent. more. Profits were such at this charge of 12 cents a thousand feet that in some tracts single wells would repay the cost of the land every four days and two hours, or eighty-nine times a year. Since then the private corporations have raised their rate to 25 cents. The city continued the rates at 8 cents until December, 1892, when the rate was advanced to 15 cents. This advance would have been unnecessary but for the losses arising from the obstructions placed in the way of the city plant. The people of Toledo got their gas lands, pipe line, and street mains for an outlay of $1,181,743 up to the end of 1891,[547] and $1,294,467 up to the end of 1892. In the canvass before the election in 1889 their opponents declared that $4,000,000 would be required. Private enterprise cannot find rhetoric strong enough to express its contempt for the inefficiency, costliness, and despotisms of public enterprise. Private enterprise put at $6,000,000--twelve times the amount of the property they reported for taxation--the "capital" stock invested by the two natural-gas companies. The city pipe line was capitalized (bonded) at just what it cost--a little more than a million. The city trustees built a better pipe line than private enterprise had laid. The private line was of cheap iron of 14-feet lengths, while Toledo's was in 24-feet pieces. One of the private lines was laid with rubber joints and in shallow trenches, in many places of not more than plough depth. It leaked at almost every joint; its course could be traced across the fields by the smell of gas and the blighted line of vegetation. There were frequent explosions from the escaping gas; lives and property were much endangered. The city line was laid with lead joints, and had every device that engineering experience could suggest for its success, and was so constructed that it could be cleaned or repaired, and freed from liquids interfering with the flow of gas, without shutting off the supply--features the other pipe had not. The action of the city trustees had to endure the microscopic scrutiny of friend and foe. No one was able to show as to a single acre that the title was defective, or that it could have been bought for less, or to find any taint of a job in the construction of the pipe. A committee of the city council sat and probed for six weeks, but failed to find any evidence whatever to confirm the reported "irregularities."