tti
 
 LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 STEWART S. HOWE 
 
 JOURNALISM CLASS OF 1928 
 
 STEWART S. HOWE FOUNDATION 
 
 338.7 
 
 R369S 
 cop . 6 
 
 I.H.S.
 
 75 M^ars of 
 
 Gas Ser\ice in Chicago 
 
 /)v W'.M.i.Aei: Kkk 
 
 J{n interesting history oj the 
 origin and grozvth of the gas 
 industry in Chicago^ together 
 zvith an account of the various 
 gas companies now consoli- 
 dated into one organization 
 
 ^DCT^ 
 
 The Peoples 
 Gas Lioht and Coke Company 
 
 Michigan .-frfnuf at Adams Sirfft 
 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
 
 Copyritht, 19Jf. Tut I'LurLLk Ga* Lioht am> Cuki. Cuui-any
 
 3 3^.7 . 
 
 Preface 
 
 SOMETHING will have gone amiss in this brief account 
 k^ of seventy -five years of gas service in Chicago if^ at least 
 between the lines ^ it is not apparent that there has been from 
 the beginning a slow but certain training in that most diffi- 
 cult of all arts^ the art of livings an education in humanity 
 if not in the humanities. 
 
 At the outset the public had to be taught the use of gas as a 
 means of lighting., the best then known; at the close the public 
 is still being taught the use of gas ^ but for purposes of cookings 
 heating and refrigeration., and still the best. Always has there 
 been adjustment and readjustment between the public^ the 
 Company and its employees. Since the creation of a state 
 commission to supervise and regulate public utility companies ^ 
 the men of wisdom and of political acumen who compose it 
 have been learning that public utilities are well intentioned^ 
 and are increasingly aware that mere selfishness^ however 
 seemingly enlightened., means economic failure^ while the 
 Company has been taught in its turn that politicians and 
 office holders can be fair and disinterested. 
 
 This educational process shows at its best in the final 
 chapter. It takes time to rid both employer and employed of 
 the outgrown suggestions implied in the old legal phrase 
 ''master and servant^'' but it is being done. The employee^ 
 as time goes on, is surer of the simple essentials to happiness, 
 justice and his job. The management is equally assured of 
 the willingness of its working force to give an honest day's 
 work in return. The reactions of this double assurance upon 
 the inhabitants of Chicago are truly making the prophecy 
 come true which was long ago implied in the name. The 
 Peoples Gas Light ^ Coke Company. -yY j^
 
 
 
 ■' ^\ 'i^^ 
 
 i7:B' .'41 -^ 
 
 CllAl'TKR 1 
 
 BefjinninfJi-s 
 
 On October 16, 1848, a group of men already prominent in 
 Chicago and destined to become much more so, gathered in the 
 law office of Norman B. Judd, in (jeorge Smith's Bank Building 
 at Nos. 41 and 43 South Clark Street, to make the necessary 
 application to the Illinois legislature for incorporation in order 
 to begin the manufacture of gas for the city's streets and houses. 
 Those who signed the application were Hart L. Stewart, post- 
 master and owner of the hotel later known as the St. James; 
 \V. S. Bennett; Francis C. Sherman, owner of the Sherman 
 House, maker of much of the lime and brick that was building 
 up the growing town, and its mayor in 1841 and, later, in 1862- 
 1863; Peter L. Updike, a prosperous real estate dealer as well as 
 a contractor and builder, and Peter Page, another builder and an 
 alderman for the Kirst Ward, which in those da>s lay cast of 
 State Street. 
 
 The first boat was to come up the Illinois River, through the 
 Illinois and Michigan Canal and thence into Lake Michigan, on 
 April 10, 1849, and the Canal, so long the commercial hope of the 
 place, was to be formally declared open six days later with 
 appropriate ceremonies, to do from the first a rushing business
 
 4 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 with passengers and freight. Thus was placed at the young 
 city's disposal for the first time the inexhaustible supply of coal 
 in the neighborhood of La Salle, by which the manufacture of 
 gas for illuminating purposes was made commercially possible. 
 
 Coal Scarce and Unused 
 
 Theretofore such fuel of the kind as Chicago had known had 
 come in sailing vessels from the East over the Lakes, and was ex- 
 pensive in comparison with the universally used wood for every 
 heating and cooking use, taken from the forests near at hand. 
 Eighty tons had been brought from Erie eight years before, and 
 it had taken two years to sell it. Indeed, a new kind of grate, 
 to stand on legs, had to be invented and introduced before the 
 coal could be advantageously burned. 
 
 It is worthy of historical note that it was near La Salle and in 
 the year 1680 that the first practical use of coal in the New 
 World is mentioned. A party of French explorers and mission- 
 aries, captained by La Salle's trusted friend and lieutenant, 
 Henry de Tonty, him of the iron hand, had with them a portable 
 forge in which the new fuel was tried. They noted the coal as 
 evil smelling; it was the first whiff of gas to reach a white man's 
 nose in the Americas. It was also the beginning of the smoke 
 nuisance, of which more will be said later. 
 
 As a further incentive to the introduction here of the first of 
 what we now know as public utilities, gas companies had already 
 been formed in Detroit and Cleveland, both much older and in 
 1840 more populous than Chicago, and they were to have gas 
 light in their streets and houses in 1849. It was time to act and 
 the place for action, now that cheap raw materials were to be 
 afforded. 
 
 First Chicago Company 
 
 On Monday, February 12, 1849, to begin his week well. Governor 
 Augustus C. French signed the charter of the company at 
 Springfield after its passage through the general assembly. It 
 chanced to be the fortieth birthday of one of Springfield's rising 
 lawyers, Abraham Lincoln, who had retired from active politics 
 several years before and was devoting himself to building up a 
 law practice that was presently to gain for him as clients such 
 great corporations as the projected Illinois Central and the
 
 75 VEARS OF r,.\S SF.RVK K IN C Mlr\(.(> 
 
 Micliigan Central Railroads. Bui it is doubtful if even the new 
 gas company's attorney, Mr. Judd, who was to nominate Lincoln 
 for the presidency at the Wigwam here ir) -April, 1K^>(), was 
 aware of the coincidence. 
 
 The act conferred broad powers upon the Chicago Oas Light 
 and Coke Company, and conferred them in perpetuity — "with 
 perpetual succession," in the words of the charter. The company 
 was authorized to manufacture and sell gas to be used for lighting 
 any streets and buildings in Chicago and to lay mains and pipes 
 for that purpose in any of its streets, lanes, and highways, pro- 
 vided no permanent damage was done them thereby, with no 
 reference to consent by the city authorities therefor. It was given 
 the exclusive right to supply gas to the city and its people for 
 ten years, with no stipulation limiting its charges for such ser- 
 vice. Its capital stock was fixed at ^^300,000 in shares of $2S each, 
 and it was allowed to hold real estate not to exceed )^50,()00 in 
 
 value. 
 
 The Company's Officials 
 
 Officers and Directors of the new corporation were dulj' elected 
 by its stockholders and a corporate seal adopted on October 16, 
 1849. The Hon. Hugh T. Dickey, most popular as the first judge 
 of the Circuit Court of Cook County, was elected President, an 
 office he was to hold until 1873; James K. Burtis, a lumber 
 dealer, became Secretary and Treasurer; and the Directors were 
 Thomas Dyer, forwarding and commission merchant in South 
 Water Street, to be Mayor of the city in 1862; Francis C. Sher- 
 man; Joseph Keen, Jr., a bookseller and stationer in Lake Street;- 
 Mark Skinner, a man of means and long the attorney for the 
 corporation; Franklin Lee, George F. Lee, and John Lee, of Phila- 
 delphia, experienced builders of gas plants; and George Smith, 
 of the Wisconsin Fire and Marine Insurance Company, the 
 promises to pay of which were illegally in use as bank notes, but, 
 having the fortunate quality of being redeemed when presented, 
 were the one stable currency of those wild-cat days. Smith's 
 name was a guaranty of financial stability, but all named were 
 representative and energetic men, several of them alrcad\ listed 
 as "old settlers." 
 
 The First Contracts 
 
 On October lO, lh4V, the first contract was signed between the 
 city of Chicago and the gas company, wherein the right to lay
 
 6 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 pipes was granted and the monopoly to furnish gas was assured 
 until February 10, 1858; all personal property taxes were remit- 
 ted for five years, and good gas at 32.50 a thousand feet was 
 promised for the street lamps. No time limit was mentioned for 
 doing the work or furnishing gas and no standard set. 
 
 The next day a contract was entered into between the Com- 
 pany and George F. Lee & Company of Philadelphia, for laying 
 24,000 feet of^mains, providing gas meters, and building a manu- 
 facturing plant on the ground purchased at Monroe and Market 
 Street, which was eventually carried through to Adams. There 
 were to be a brick retort house to contain a bench of seven 
 furnaces, a brick building for the purifying apparatus, station 
 meter, and governor, which was to house the counting-room as 
 well, and a gas holder with a capacity of 60,000 cubic feet, which 
 was to be the capacity of the plant every twenty-four hours. 
 All this was to be provided for ^1 30,000, payable as the work 
 progressed up to ^80,000, the balance of 350,000 being secured by 
 first mortgage bonds upon all the real and personal property of 
 the Company, bearing interest at 7 per cent and due two years 
 after date. George F. Lee was further appointed the Engineer, 
 with a salary of 31,000 a year after the works went into opera- 
 tion. The gas was to be carburetted hydrogen (coal gas), actu- 
 ally of about 14 candle power, though this remained unspecified. 
 
 Chicago's First Gas 
 
 The 24,000 feet of mains were duly laid, a thousand feet of these 
 being ten inches in diameter, covering the principal streets down 
 town, and an underground connection was made with the River 
 to provide the water necessary in manufacture. Four hundred 
 tons of coal were laid in for the beginning of operations. The 
 City Council on September 13, 1849, ordained that no street 
 lamp should be lighted until the private parties chiefly concerned 
 should bear half the expense, and this was accomplished. Gas for 
 private persons was to be 33 a thousand, with a discount if the 
 monthly bill was settled promptly, and 125 consumers were 
 secured, in addition to 99 street lamps and the illumination of 
 the city's one public building. 
 
 All was finally in readiness, and the manufacture of gas began 
 on August 28, 1850, only one of the furnaces being fired. On
 
 75 VEARS OK t;AS SERVICE IX CHICAGO 
 
 Wednesday, September 4, there were the required 60,000 cubic 
 feet in the holder, and the gas was let into the street mains 
 during the afternoon to clear the air from mains and pipes. 
 Stores and residences were deserted to see the unguarded flames 
 flicker and flare before they settled down to steady work. En- 
 thusiastic consumers began lighting tiieir shops before twilight, 
 and as the sun went down Chicago rejoiced in what was the 
 brightest night in her history, and another step was taken on 
 the long upward march toward metropolisation. 
 
 What the Papers Said 
 
 The next afternoon The Evening Journal observed of the 
 event: "Some of the stores on Lake Street, particular!)' those 
 devoted to California ware, made a brilliant appearance, and 
 the gas lent an additional glory to refined gold. But the City 
 Hall, with its thirty-six burners, is the brightest of all, night 
 being transformed to mimic day." 
 
 The next Saturday The Gem of the Prairie, which was the 
 weekly edition of The Chicago Tribune, had more to say, as 
 follows: "Wednesday marked an era in Chicago. At about 2 
 o'clock p. M. the gas pipes were filled and brilliant torches 
 flamed on both sides of Lake Street as far as the eye could see, 
 and wherever the posts were set. The lanterns not having been 
 affixed to the posts, the bright gaseous flame eddied and flickered 
 in the wind, sometimes apparent!}' disappearing, but anon 
 shooting up as brightly as ever. 
 
 "The burners in Reed &. Co.'s and in Keen's were lighted about 
 the same time, presenting a bright golden flame. We believe 
 these establishments had the honor of first lighting up with 
 gas; others will not be much behind them. In the evening the 
 lamps were again lighted, and for the first time in the history of 
 Chicago, several of the streets were illuminated in regular city 
 style. Hereafter sIk- will not 'liidc licr liglit under a bushel.' " 
 
 Glimpsing Into the Past 
 
 Something of the life of that distant day can be read in and 
 between the lines of the contemporaneous statements. Lake 
 Street was then, and for many years afterward, the principal 
 business thoroughfare and only shopping district. By "California
 
 8 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 ware" in The Journal's account was meant the goods, equip- 
 ment, and supplies demanded by those about to make the 
 long overland journey to the Pacific Coast, where gold had been 
 discovered at the beginning of 1848, and was at that moment in 
 its highest state of productiveness. Nuggets of the glistening 
 stuff had evidently been placed to catch the newer and brighter 
 light, and add to the lure of sudden riches to be gained for the 
 picking. 
 
 The "City Hall" was in the Market Building erected by the 
 city government in January, 1848. It was set in the middle of 
 State Street, with a frontage of forty feet on the line of Randolph 
 and running back 180 feet toward Lake. The first of our muni- 
 cipal buildings, it was of brick, two stories in height, and it cost 
 311,070. The ground floor was divided into thirty-two stalls for 
 the marketmen, and on the second story were four rooms, one in 
 front for the City Clerk, one in the rear for a non-existent library 
 (a good omen), and between these a large double room with 
 folding doors, used as a court-room by day and for the City 
 Council and public gatherings by night. 
 
 ''Reed & Co.'s" was the drug store of Josiah H. Reed & 
 Company at Nos. 144 and 146 Lake Street; and "Keen's" was 
 Joseph Keen & Brother, No. 161 Lake Street. Keen has already 
 
 Chicago in 1851, from an original drawing never before reproduced — Courtesy of 
 Chicago Historical Society
 
 7n years ok gas service in CHK\f.() 
 
 been iiK'ntioncd as oir" of tlu' Directors of the Company, 
 which had just leased tlie floor above his shop at 5^75 a year, 
 to provide a more convenient point for the payment of the 
 montlily bills, being described as a "very central place." It is 
 pleasant to note that all bills were promptly paid in order to 
 v;et the discount and that all the 125 custonuTS were well satis- 
 tied and pleased. 
 
 Making A Good Start 
 
 The consumption of gas at the beginning averaged about 15,000 
 cubic feet a night, of which 11,800 was for private use. On 
 October 6, 1850, it was found necessary to use the second fur- 
 nace, increasing the output to 22.(XX) feet for the twenty-four 
 hours, a total for the year of 8,030.(X)0 cubic feet. With the help 
 of moonlit nights, when the street lamps were not lighted, this 
 was expected to carry the Company through for twelve months. 
 Ready markets were found for coke at 123^2 cents a bushel and 
 for coal tar at ^1.50 a barrel, prices higher than had been 
 expected, which went a good wa\' in pa^'ing for the coal, part of 
 which could be had during navigation from eastern coal mines 
 at 31.25 a ton. 
 
 At the beginning of 1851 the Company paid its first tax bill, 
 amounting to J^78. 80. This was for its real estate; a personal 
 property tax was also levied, which was eventually compromised. 
 (At the beginning of 1925 the taxes accrued of The Peoples Gas 
 Light and Coke Company amounted to 32,506,542.75. In 1924 
 there were 31,621,305,748 cubic feet of gas sold in Chicago.) 
 On May 13, 1851, a semi-annual dividend of 53-2 pc cent was 
 declared on the capital stock of 390,000, and dividends were 
 regularh' paid by the Chicago Company thereafter. 
 
 Keeping up With Population 
 
 In spite of many elements that worked against the larger use of 
 gas the Company kept even with the rapid growth of the city. 
 The city grew from 30,000 in 1850 to 1 10,000 in 1860, in spite of 
 the disastrous panic of 1857 and the very hard times which fol- 
 lowed, an increase of 367 per cent; in the same time the Com- 
 pany increased the number of miles of its mains from five to 
 hfty-three, or more than 1,000 per cent, and the number of its 
 consumers from 125 to more than 2.000, or more iliaii l,^00 per 
 cent.
 
 lO THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 In March, 1853, the contract was let for a main under the 
 River at La Salle Street for supplying the North Side with gas, 
 and four-inch mains were ordered laid from La Salle and North 
 Water Streets to the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad station 
 and on both sides of North Clark Street as far as Ontario. Li 
 the spring of 1854 a similar main to the West Side was laid under 
 the River at Monroe Street. Meanwhile a holder with a capacity 
 of 300,000 cubic feet was under construction at Adams, Monroe, 
 and Market Streets to care for the increase of business, together 
 with a manufacturing plant to correspond. Everything on that 
 site was destroyed in the Fire of 1871 and never rebuilt. 
 
 Facing the Future 
 
 On February 9, 1855, an amendment to the original charter of 
 the Company was obtained from the Illinois Legislature, w^hich 
 authorized the Company to increase its capital stock to 31,000,- 
 000, to borrow such money as it needed for constructing, carry- 
 ing on and completing its work, and to issue bonds therefor, 
 and which also legalized all bond issues previously made and 
 gave the Company the right to acquire all such real estate in 
 Chicago as might be needed for its business, thus removing the 
 restrictions in the original document. 
 
 A holder on the North Side was completed in 1861 and an- 
 other main from the shop on the South Side was carried across 
 the River at Franklin Street to supply it; this time the main 
 was a sixteen-inch one, in contrast to the four-inch pipe of eight 
 years before. On May 20, 1859, a contract was entered into 
 between the City Council and the Company whereby gas was 
 to be furnished for ten years at $2 a thousand feet, a reduction 
 of 20 per cent. It was the beginning of providing cheaper gas, 
 sadly interrupted by the mounting costs of labor and materials 
 during and after the Civil War, then less than two years away.
 
 >^^'6C 
 
 ^^''-^'- 
 
 i l/j 
 
 
 
 
 I , I, 7 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Chicaf^o Seventy-fi\ e Years A^o 
 
 As gas is the oldest of the indispensable group of modern con- 
 veniences-becomc-necessiiies now known as public utilities, so 
 was it the first to enter into the daily lives of the people of Chi- 
 cago, as elsewhere. In 1850 and for many a busy year afterward 
 it was thought of only as a means of illumination; its develop- 
 ments for power, for warming houses, for cooking and refriger- 
 ation, and for every purpose for which controllable heat is de- 
 manded in the industries is a story not yet fully told nor ended, 
 part of it growing out of the evolution of electricity. 
 
 What daily life was in the enterprising city, which was born 
 in 1837, after thirteen years of civic life must seem incredible to 
 the younger people of today, so lacking was it in so much of 
 what we now look upon as the mere decencies of existence. 
 Indeed, it was only the year before, in 1849, that Chicago was 
 at its worst in several senses, for little had been done to make it 
 habitable beyond laying out streets and building houses, and 
 the population was apparently beyond control, so great had been 
 its rush to arrive and so rushing the daily existence upon arrival.
 
 12 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 Here sprawled an incongruous mess of hastily constructed 
 buildings, for habitation and business, for which the so-called 
 balloon frame had been invented that they might be thrown to- 
 together with the greatest saving in time and materials, beauty 
 of architecture being undreamt of. 
 
 An Assortment of Evils 
 
 The water supply was wholly inadequate and what there was 
 of it was bad. Epidemics of cholera appalled the town; there 
 was one in 1849. Smallpox was always a threat. Typhoid was a 
 menace, the worse for ignorance of its processes. It could hardly 
 be otherwise when the only drainage was on the surface of the 
 streets, their intersections were noisome cesspools and the ways 
 themselves were filled with what was called at the time an 
 "indescribable liquid." All surface waters and sewage poured into 
 the river, with the result that for many years it held an abomina- 
 ble stench. There was no flow from it except lazily into the Lake 
 for pollution there, with a single occasional exception : During the 
 Spring freshet the Desplaines overflowed into the South Branch 
 by way of Mud Lake, sometimes, as in March, 1849, bringing 
 disaster to the shipping crowded into the River and wrecking 
 the bridges across it; the damage was 380,000 in that year. 
 As there was no decent water in the town until 1854, two years 
 after the city had taken over the waterworks, as there was no 
 possible sewage system until the South Side down town was 
 raised from eight to fourteen feet above its natural level in 
 1856-1858, so was there in 1850 no protection worthy the name 
 against devastating fires, however willing the volunteer firemen 
 with their hand-engines might be and however heroically they 
 worked when called upon. There were great fires then, too, 
 remembering the size of the place, as on October 27, 1839, with 
 a 375,000 loss and on July 21, 1849, when the loss was greater. 
 The first steam fire-engine was to come in February, 1858, after 
 a conflagration on October 19, 1857, which destroyed twenty- 
 three lives and half a million dollars' worth of property. 
 
 A Metropolis in the Egg 
 
 The boundary of Chicago in 1850 ran west from Lake Michigan 
 on Center Avenue to North Clark Street, thence south to North 
 Avenue and on this west to Wood Street. South in Wood Street
 
 7? YEARS OF GAS SERVICE IN CHICAGO 
 
 it marched straight four miles to Twenty-second Street, and on 
 this east to the Lake again, the wliole containing 9.76 square 
 miles. Most of the population, whether for residential or busi- 
 ness purposes as may be seen in connection with the lists of 
 incorporators of the gas companies, was in what is now the Loop. 
 The North Side stood high and dry and would have been prefer- 
 able for settlement on many an account, but properly there was 
 held at a figure thought too high, and the people accordingl\' 
 crowded into the miry ground on the South Side. In 1850 there 
 were 30,000 people in the town; in 1855, 80,000; in 1860, 1 10,{KXJ; 
 in the first named year therefore Chicago was about the size of 
 the pleasant cities of the Fox River X'alley today, somewhat 
 larger perhaps than Klgin and rather smaller than Joliet and 
 Aurora. With this every resemblance abruptly ends. 
 
 Beginning to Hatch 
 
 The differences lie in transportation and communication, so 
 far as the outer world is concerned; still more largely in light- 
 ing and heating and the intimacies of domestic life economically 
 speaking. After a brief attempt at using stone, which sank into 
 the universal mud and dropped out of sight in less than two 
 years, five miles of oak planks were laid on the swampy streets 
 of Ciiicago in 1849 and 1850. Fifty miles more of plank roads ran 
 from town to various points more or less consequential north, 
 south, and west. Beyond these for years was prairie mud. By 
 1857 plank roads, hailed as a deliverance only seven years before, 
 had proved themselves little better than worthless, and more 
 expensive than macadam. Vet there followed a brief attack of 
 cobble stones, as in State and Randolph Streets, and then wood- 
 en blocks everywhere, most of which caught fire and burnt up in 
 the fire of 1871. .Xs a matter of course passenger, mail, and express 
 services were contingent upon the weather, as was all freighting 
 and travel by land to and from the city. In 1850 the first timid 
 omnibuses began to run, and nine years later the first street-cars. 
 There had been a little strap-rail railroad running out to the 
 Desplaines River opened in 1848, and on February 1, 1849, it 
 had reached Elgin — an occasion for public celebration. It was 
 called the Galena & Chicago Union — note the sequence of 
 names — and is now a part of the Chicago & Northwestern 
 system. The Michigan Southern ran its first train from the Hast
 
 14 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 into Chicago on February 20, 1852; the Michigan Central on 
 May 21 following. The Illinois Central did not get its through 
 line here until January 1, 1857, though it began the city's first 
 suburban service as far as Hyde Park in 1856. All other travel 
 on land was done by stage coaches, dangerous to life and limb 
 by reason of the outrageous roads and lack of bridges. 
 
 The Lake, while navigation was open, was the most reliable 
 and safest means of transportation for every purpose, in spite 
 of numerous wrecks, but it failed utterly during the colder 
 months. The first steamboat had arrived on July 10, 1832, 
 bringing General Winfield Scott and a contingent of the regular 
 army to the Black Hawk War, only to be stricken down with the 
 cholera epidemic then raging, with a resultant quarantine in 
 what is now Riverside. In 1850 there were several steamboat 
 lines in more or less regular operation, but an arrival was still 
 important enough to be heralded by a display of no less than six 
 flags flown in the harbor, when no small share of the populace 
 honored it with their attendance in quite the spirit of those one 
 sees at way stations, from an express train. As in antiquity, 
 water carriage held supremacy, buttressed by the opening of 
 the Illinois and Michigan Canal in 1849, after thirteen years of 
 digging more or less desultory, preceded by twenty years of 
 discussion and financing more or less futile. 
 
 Facilities and Lack of Them 
 
 Postal facilities were of course dependent upon mail carriers, 
 stage coaches, and the state of the post-roads, mere paths in 
 the wilderness. In 1850 there were no letter boxes, no deliveries 
 at home or office, no sub-stations. If one wished to mail a letter 
 one went to the postoifice at No. 50 Clark Street near the 
 Sherman House. If one wished to get a letter the same travel was 
 necessary after waiting an hour and a half for distribution after 
 the irregular mail came in. A written order was required to get 
 mail for another. A messenger or a visit in person was necessary 
 for any speedy communication in town. Nearly thirty years 
 were to pass before a telephone could be used. 
 
 The first electric telegraph message was received on January 
 15, 1848. It came from Milwaukee, and it is worth noting that, 
 like the railroads, the first communication was not with the
 
 75 VEARS OF CAS SERVICF IN' CHICACO IC 
 
 East. It was the April 6 following that the first dispatch arrived 
 from Detroit and the Atlantic seaboard. And this was the be- 
 ginning of the use of electricity for any practical purpose, 
 telephones, dynamos, lights, trolley cars, power transmission, 
 annunciators, elevators, and the rest being undreamt of. Yet 
 these today are no longer luxuries nor conveniences, but a part 
 of every-day civilization, along with mail boxes, postmen, 
 special delivery letters, and telegrams reported by telephone or 
 written on a typewriter. 
 
 Public Buildings 
 
 The first public building of the municipality, as has been noted, 
 was opened on January 1, 1848. In 1842 the square on which 
 now stands the city hall and county building was in such a state 
 of shameful neglect that public-spirited citizens of their own 
 motion abated the nuisance, clearing the ground, planting trees, 
 and buidling a fence to prevent its further use as a dumping 
 ground for rubbish; the newspapers of the day then found fault 
 with them for not thoroughly whitewashing the fence built by 
 their own money and exertions. 
 
 In December, 1850, the agitation for an adequate public 
 building to house both the city and county governmental 
 authorities began. After an active dispute between the two was 
 settled the cornerstone of the first monumental structure in 
 town was laid on September 1, 1851. It was, as originally de- 
 signed and finished, of admirable dimensions and much beauty 
 of design, such as could be worthily reproduced today as a 
 memorial. Later, alas, another story, a new cupola, and two 
 discordant wings were added and occupied in 1870, in time to be 
 destroyed in the Cireat Fire and thus a material but not an 
 esthetic loss. 
 
 Heating and Ligliting 
 
 With gas in 1850 came the first of the scientific inventions and 
 discoveries which now enabled civilized men to make a single 
 movement of the hand and thereby obtain light, heat, power, 
 speech at a distance, rapid transportation, vertically or hori- 
 zontally, a ringing bell or other signal, and a hundred other 
 conveniences grown to necessities whose very commonness 
 causes them to be taken for granted. If in that distant day heat
 
 l6 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 was desired wood was brought from a distance upon oral or 
 written order, paper and kindling had in readiness, a fire laid 
 on a hearth or in a stove, a match used to light it and then 
 gradual warmth. When out — and out it went without constant 
 attention — there were ashes to be disposed and more supplies 
 eventually laid in, adding to the trouble, expense, and dirt of 
 the moment. When coal came into general use, the case was 
 little, if any better. 
 
 Candles then afforded the easiest — and dimmest — form of 
 interior illumination, and these, for the amount of light given 
 out, were also the most expensive. Otherwise a lamp had to 
 be bought with its chimney, wick, and lighting fluid, and con- 
 stantly tended thereafter to keep it useful. Whale oil with its 
 disagreeable odor was in demand and the alternative was 
 camphene, which is turpentine from which its resins have been 
 distilled, demanding a strong draft to keep its flame from smok- 
 ing. With kerosene or coal oil ten years later the danger of ex- 
 plosion was added. Lamps were an improvement upon anything 
 that had gone before, but they again set a burden of trouble 
 and expense upon the shoulders of their users. 
 
 Engines and Elevators 
 
 There were then no engines which could be set going by a move- 
 ment of the fingers. There was no refrigeration by which, a 
 valve once turned and a match applied, the need of further 
 thought of ice was gone for months. Nor was there any apparatus 
 on earth by which water might be instantly heated for washing 
 or bathing, or a house warmed throughout a Chicago winter 
 without defilement of the rooms within or the atmosphere with- 
 out by soot and other dirt. 
 
 There were few elevators or lifts in Chicago before the Civil 
 War, and these were slow, hesitant, and productive of accident 
 with the steam engines of that day. In 1861 they were still so 
 unusual that the new Sherman House, opened that June, 
 advertised that "A perpendicular railroad connects floor with 
 floor, rendering passage by the stairs unnecessary." 
 
 To ring a bell in that day meant giving a hard pull at a handle 
 or cord which tensed a wire and gave an eventual signal else- 
 where when it was in order, and it was frequently out of order;
 
 75 VEARS or CAS <;rR\IC r IN- CHICACO 17 
 
 annunciators of any other kind were unkiujwn. It was iliirty 
 years before an electric spark was used for liKhiinj; gas, and in 
 the streets the lamplighter made his slow progress with his 
 torch at twilight, and another in the morning to extinguish 
 the flame so lighted. One has not to be a grandparent to rcincm- 
 ber this. 
 
 It is true that Chicago's atmosphere was not so much of a 
 nuisance in that elder day, and trees lined many a downtown 
 street and flourished in the Court House Square; but the grow- 
 ing use of gas for heating everywhere and for every purpose 
 contains the only effective promise for doing away with the 
 smoke nuisance as with a thousand other bothers, cares, and 
 worries, such as infested the da>s and nights of seventy-five 
 years ago. 
 
 Formation of Civic Pride 
 Yet even then Chicago had shown and was showing what was 
 in her. Disease, mire, and flame were alike powerless against 
 the spirit of her people. It is hardly enough to say of them that 
 diflftculties seemed to exist chiefly that they might be triumphed 
 over. The channels in which their early endeavors were being 
 trained enabled them to surmount even greater calamities and 
 catastrophes later. The civic pride which pulled her out of a 
 noxious morass and rebuilt her after almost total destruction 
 by fire is still the fountain from which flows the successful effort 
 — gigantic almost to the point of incredibility — to make fully 
 effective every dream of the Chicago Plan Commission. 
 
 And in this growth and development, sharing the city's 
 victories and defeats, its weakness and its strength, the local gas 
 companies, united at last under a single management, have had 
 no insignificant share.
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Division 
 
 On Feburary 12, 1855, Governor Joel A. Matteson signed the 
 bill creating The Peoples Gas Light and Coke Company, the 
 only survivor now of many similar efforts at competition. Could 
 the old monopoly have been preserved and adequately super- 
 vised by governmental authority, and could the unsoundness of 
 competition in public utility service have been recognized, much 
 time, effort and money might have been saved the city, its 
 people and the gas companies themselves. It was more than 
 half a century before the lesson was finally learned, and then 
 only in the difficult and expensive school of experience. 
 
 It will be noted that by one of those curious and meaningless 
 coincidences with which human life abounds the new company 
 was six years to a day younger than its predecessor, again in- 
 volving Abraham Lincoln's birthday. By this time the great 
 liberator was forty-six years old, and he was now fully embarked 
 on the political career which was to make him President of the 
 United States. He had been elected to the Illinois legislature a 
 few months before, and was already its leader, as the only 
 member of it able and willing to oppose the powerful Stephen 
 A. Douglas with any chance of success.
 
 "•f YEARS OK CAS S K R \' U" K ! N rH!C"A(;<) 19 
 
 The incorporators of the new company, like those of its fore- 
 runner, were well known men in town, as follows: L. C. Paiiu- 
 Freer, attorney and master in chancery at No. 51 South Clark 
 Street; Matthew Laflin, already prosperous, with his office at 
 No. 49 South Water Street and his residence at No. 1 Washing- 
 ton Street; Amos G. Throop, from whom Tliroop Street takes 
 its name, a real estate broker at No. 49 South Sangamon Street, 
 then an alderman from the Fifth Ward; David A. Gage, then of 
 the Tremont House and later of the Sherman and Grand 
 Pacific, with a spectacular career as City Treasurer ahead of 
 him; John S. Wallace, a dealer in lumber living at Slate Street 
 and Ridgely Place; George W. Snow, also a lumber dealer, but 
 described in an early directory simply as "colonel," with his 
 house at No. 74 Jackson Street; Robert H. Foss, another dealer 
 in lumber with his yard at Monroe and Canal Streets and his 
 residence at Monroe and Throop; and Henry B. Bay, manufac- 
 turer of dredging and excavating machinery at Nos. 61 and 63 
 Canal Street. 
 
 New Company Starts Slowly 
 
 As in the former group, it is instructive to see how many lead- 
 ing men were concerned with the material upbuilding of the 
 city, which had grown from 30,000 in 1850 to 80,000 in 1855. 
 Small wonder attention was paid to real estate and its improve- 
 ments in the face of such demand. 
 
 To these men and their associates, with perpetual succession, 
 was given the right to hold all real property up to $100,000 in 
 value necessary for the purposes of making and selling gas in 
 Chicago on and after February 12, 1859, and sooner if the earlier 
 company should consent. The capital stock of the corporation 
 was not to exceed $500,000, and it was named as an "express 
 provision" that gas was to be furnished the city at not more 
 than $2 a thousand cubic feet, and not more than $2.50 to its 
 people. This appears to be the first exercised control of corpora- 
 tion rates of public utilities by the general assembly; and not a 
 particularly fortunate one in the light of what was to follow 
 within very few years. 
 
 The year of incorporation was prosperous enough, to be sure, 
 but the panic of 1857 was already on its way, with the threat of
 
 20 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 secession in the air and civil war just below the horizon. Men 
 who had ready money were using it to maintain their business 
 credit and not for subscription to any speculative enterprise, 
 such as a new gas company must be until the prohibitive 
 monopoly expired by its terms. Accordingly, one by one nearly 
 all the original subscribers faded from the scene, and it was more 
 than three years before its first meeting to incorporate was duly 
 held. 
 
 This was on October 11, 1858, when Robert H. Foss, an orig- 
 inal subscriber, was chosen President and Henry W. Zimmerman 
 Secretary. Foss was also a Director, and his colleagues on the 
 Board were Amos G. Throop, Sextus N. Wilcox, of Wilcox & 
 Lyon, a lumber dealer living at No. 143 South Peoria Street, 
 Joshua L. Marsh, an attorney with several kinsmen in the 
 lumber business, and Philo D. Mickles of the eastern house of 
 Mickles, Dickson & Mickles, contractors, who was expected to 
 do for the new concern what the Lees of Philadelphia had done 
 for the older one. The meeting was held in the law offices of 
 Marsh & King at No. 76 South Dearborn Street, and the junior 
 in this firm was John Lyle King, a notable figure in those days. 
 
 Further Difficulties 
 
 The intervening time had not been wholly idle. On August 30, 
 1858, the city council passed an ordinance empowering the 
 Peoples Company to lay mains under strict supervision and only 
 after consultation with the mayor or city superintendent of 
 works and further express permission from the council itself 
 with still another proviso that for any pipes laid during the 
 duration of the Chicago Company's monopoly that Company's 
 permission should first be obtained. This was something, but it 
 did not do much to help the sale of the new company's stock. 
 But land was bought for the present station at Twenty-second 
 Street and Racine Avenue and work started on it for a manufac- 
 turing plant and gas holder, leaving it in the oldest of the present 
 Company's works. In December, President Foss was also 
 elected Treasurer. April 12, 1859, a contract was made with the 
 city for street lighting, and a few days later Artemas Carter, a 
 lumber commission merchant with yards at South Water near 
 Lake and at Stewart and Lumber Streets, living at No. 175 
 South Jefferson Street, and Hugh Maher, still another lumber-
 
 "■ ; VFARS OF CAS S K R \' I C F IV CM If A CO 
 
 man, were elected Directors. Tlic by-laws having fixed the num- 
 ber in the Board at five, this action was rescinded later. 
 
 The difficulties in raising money increased rather than dim- 
 inished. At the close of 1S59 the People's Company attempted to 
 raise )^50,(XX) in New York to complete the works. A few weeks 
 later the interest of seven per cent proposed for the loan was 
 raised to "not exceeding ten per cent," and in July, 1861, the 
 principal sum sought was raised to J^100,(XX), after both Mickles, 
 Dickson & Mickles and the Trenton Locomotive is: Machinery 
 Contracting Company had failed to complete the work. 
 
 Cutting the Knots 
 
 During the interval a new force projected itself into the local 
 situation in the person of Albert Merriit Billings. He was a 
 shrewd Vermonter who had made a small fortune in a factory 
 for making yeast which he had established in Claremont, N. H. 
 This small place was also the headquarters of the American Gas 
 Light Company, which owned a patent for purifying gas with 
 water in which he acquired an interest. In 1859 he came to 
 Chicago and sold the right to use the purifying process to the 
 Peoples Company, and was obliged to take notes at six and nine 
 months in payment. This led him to a close examination of the 
 state of the Peoples Company's affairs and to an investment in it. 
 
 On February 26, 1861, Billings was elected a director. On 
 May 22 next it was officially recorded that after most diligent 
 efforts the Company had not been able to make any disposition 
 of securities that would allow it to complete its manufacturing 
 plant. The next day a contract was made with Cornelius K. 
 Garrison, in which Billings had a share, for building the gas 
 works. But the Company had to make a second mortgage on all 
 its property for }^240,000 at ten per cent on June 17, and for 
 further security the entire concern was leased to Garrison and 
 Billings for ninetj-nine years, the mortgage being only a part 
 payment. 
 
 On July 23 the first designation of streets in which mains 
 were to be laid was made to the Board of Public Works, and in 
 September Garrison was authorized to buy all the pipe he needed 
 and it was left to his discretion whether or not he should use any
 
 22 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 part of it for crossing tlie River or its branches. On June 1, 
 1862, the Peoples Company was thus enabled to begin the manu- 
 facture and distribution of gas. 
 
 Billings's connection with Garrison went back to 1859, when 
 the latter had newly come to New York from San Francisco, 
 where he had built up a fortune. Both men were looking for 
 business chances, both were versatile and of varied experience, 
 and each recognized in the other a kindred spirit. So it was 
 Pacific Coast and Yankee capital brought by way of the Atlantic 
 seaboard which finally enabled the Peoples Gas Company to 
 help illuminate Chicago in the Middle West. And it was Billings, 
 with the aid of a Board of Directors long identified with the 
 West Side, as he himself became in 1864 and so remained, who 
 conceived and put into practice the idea of dividing the city 
 area between his own and the older corporation. Threatened 
 competition with cheaper gas was potent in procuring an agree- 
 ment from the Chicago Company to confine its business to the 
 North and South Sides, as the discretion reposed in Garrison 
 about entering that territory shows. On April 23, 1862, the 
 Chicago Company sold to the Peoples the thirteen miles of 
 mains it had laid and owned on, the west side of the River, and 
 it never actually entered that district or attempted to do so 
 until 1886. 
 
 Amending the Charter 
 On February 7, 1865, a private law was enacted by the legisla- 
 ture of the State. By this the restriction on the amount of real 
 estate the Company might own was removed; the limit of 
 the capital stock was raised to 3500,000 with the right to 
 increase it from time to time at the pleasure of the corpora- 
 tion; the limitation of the price to be paid for gas by the 
 city and its people was stricken out and in its stead the city was 
 empowered to regulate prices but only after ten years had ex- 
 pired and only then with the reservation that the price should 
 not be reduced below $3 a thousand cubic feet; and, finally, the 
 Company was empowered to borrow money and to lease or 
 mortgage any of its properties or franchises for that purpose. On 
 October 26, 1865, Billings was elected the President of the Com- 
 pany, an office he was to hold until succeeded by his son in
 
 75 YEARS OF GAS SERVICF IN CHlCA(;o 
 
 23 
 
 188S. Artemas Carter, who had been chosen President on May 
 25, 1861, was Billings's predecessor. 
 
 The Civil War with the depreciation of currency ensuing upon 
 it greatly increased the price of all materials used in the making 
 and distributing of gas; coal went to 5^13 a ton, for example. 
 The marching away of a million men led to profound distur- 
 bances in the world of work as well, with consequent increases in 
 labor costs. In the taxation measures necessary for financing the 
 war was included an impost of 25 cents a thousand feet for il- 
 luminating gas, to be accounted for and paid monthly, Sep- 
 tember 1, 1862, the war tax was added to all gas bills, public and 
 private. This order was rescinded on September 17, and enforced 
 again on April 4, 1864, there to remain until September 1, 1871, 
 when it was abolished by the government. On July 25, 1864, 
 the price of gas was raised to $3 a thousand feet, and on May 1, 
 1865, to 34.25, including the war tax. Even then there was an 
 occasional month when the cost of manufacture exceeded the 
 price received. On December 22, 1865, lots were bought on the 
 
 } 
 
 .Scene at (.'hlca^o Fire. |H71 rcprnJuccJ by courtesy of 
 Chlcnifto Hiftlorlcul Society
 
 24 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 north branch of the River; on July 17, 1867, a new station was 
 ordered built thereon; and on March 6, 1871, a thirty-inch main 
 across the River at Dearborn Street to the new plant was put 
 in the way of construction. 
 
 Prosperity and Calamity 
 
 The Chicago Company, until the Great Fire of 1871, was for- 
 tunate in having no history. By that year it had 135 miles of 
 mains, and the demand for gas increased so rapidly that it 
 began spending 3300,000 on the works at Crosby and Hobbie 
 Streets, which are still in operation and known as the North 
 Station. The annual consumption of coal had gone to 72,000 
 tons. On September 6, 1869, land was bought at Eleanor and 
 Loomis Streets on the South Side for works which were built 
 the next year and are now known as the South Station. In 
 February, 1870, a discount of 50 cents per thousand cubic feet 
 was made to private persons who paid their bills before the 12th 
 of the month, and for the first time special rates were authorized 
 to large consumers. 
 
 The Peoples Company also showed a steady growth, but in 
 the effort to clear away its initial indebtedness, it paid no 
 dividends until 1874. On November 30, 1868, its credit had 
 reached the point where it was able to market 3750,000 in 
 twenty-year bonds at seven per cent, using the money to pay 
 and cancel the original first and second mortgages. 
 
 Then, beginning about 9 o'clock on Sunday evening, October 
 9, 1871, such a fire devastated Chicago as history had not previ- 
 ously recorded. Beginning on the West Side it spread north and 
 east with hastening ferocity, scorching out the business district 
 down town, all of it, and eliminating the North Side, burning 
 over 1688 acres, destroying a third of all the real and personal 
 property in the town valued at 3186,000,000, including 18,000 
 buildings of every sort from palaces to hovels, which had housed 
 100,000 souls, and doing it in about twenty-seven hours. 
 Summing up, it swept over more than an acre a minute, on an 
 average, with a loss of 3100,000 every eight minutes. For 
 thousands it seemed to spell immediate and utter ruin. 
 
 Fire and Gas 
 
 The flames started in De Koven Street, a little before 9 
 o'clock Sunday night. At 1 o'clock Monday afternoon The
 
 7<: VEARS OF GAS SKRVlCi: INI lUICACO 
 
 Chicago Journal, its offices and printing plant gone, managed to 
 get into the remaining streets the first printed account of the 
 disaster, liaving secured a press at No. 15 Canal Street. Its 
 account reads in part as follows: "At about 10 o'clock last night 
 the sheet of flames licked across the River in the neighborhood 
 of Jackson Street, first igniting a small wooden building, which 
 communicated the fire to the Armory, and soon to the South 
 SideCjas Works, the immense gasometer exploding with a fear- 
 ful detonation, heard all over the city." 
 
 There is menti(Mi in the countless other stories of the Fire 
 written afterward of the explosions of various substances, but 
 no other mentions that of gas though the burning of the station 
 receives due notice. For example, James \V. Sheahan and 
 CJeorge P. Upton, both of The Chicago Tribune, say in their 
 carefulh' written book: "Right and left the flames spread as 
 fast as a man could walk, and soon the gas works and huge piles 
 of coal in the yards took fire, and a red glare shone all over the 
 doomed city." William S. Walker, another trained observer and 
 writer, says: "At nearly the same time (it was actually about 
 12:30 Monday morning), the tar works belonging to the South 
 Division gas manufactorj', situated on Adams Street near the 
 Armory, were ignited. * * * In less than five minutes a square of 
 buildings was in flames." 
 
 What Actually Happened 
 
 i'he Journal's report merely reflects the popular belief, without 
 foundation in fact, that a holder filled with gas can explode. 
 Before gas can explode, it is absolutely nccessar)' that it shall be 
 mixed with air tt) provide the elements for detonation; otherwise 
 the gas will burn in quantity as steadily as in a chandelier or 
 stove. What happened at the old works on that dreadful night 
 was what will happen whenever a similar emergency arises: the 
 man-holes in the holder were opened wide as soon as the doom 
 of the plant was assured by the onrushing flames and, as is 
 wholly probable in this case, without igniting. Had the gas 
 chanced to take fire while it was thus pouring forth it would 
 have burnt with a roar and much smoke, but with nothing 
 approaching a tremendous explosion. As a matter of fact, the 
 Adams Street holder was standing, unexploded, on its original
 
 l6 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 site until February, 1879, when it was sold to A. C. Clark for 
 33,000. 
 
 Another tale, which excludes the possibility of explosion, was 
 often repeated at the time and may be found in the histories, and 
 attempts to account for the apparent burning of buildings from 
 within rather than from any cause without. It states that the 
 gas from the holder in Adams Street was turned into the sewers 
 and rising thence into the structures along the line of march of 
 the flames caused the spread of the conflagration and with 
 greater rapidity. Apart from the impossibility of such a diver- 
 sion, since there is no connection between the mains leading 
 from the holder to the sewers nor could gas be forced from one 
 to the other without much pressure, this story errs on the other 
 side. Gas introduced into any building in such a manner would 
 of necessity be mixed with air, with the result that every such 
 building would not merely have ignited but would have blown 
 up — with a fearful detonation. None did. 
 
 At the North Station 
 
 By much presence of mind and the hardest sort of hard work 
 long continued, the North Station, bounded by Hawthorne 
 Avenue and Haines, Hobbie, and Crosby Streets, was saved 
 from the general immolation of the North Side; most fortunately 
 so, for without this new plant and the new main at Dearborn 
 Street the North and South Sides would have been left without 
 gas. As the fire was seen approaching, the station pumps, taking 
 their water from the inexhaustible supply in the north branch 
 regardless of the early destruction of the city water works, were 
 set to work and manned. Everything inflammable was drenched 
 with water in steady streams, and particularly the huge coal 
 shed containing thousands of tons of soft coal in a wooden 
 building 200 feet long, 100 feet broad, and 40 feet in height. 
 Voluntary recruits from the burnt station at Adams Street were 
 welcomed as reinforcements, and every precaution was taken 
 during the hours when every building north and south and east 
 was attacked and conquered. 
 
 These precautions probably would not have saved the North 
 Station without the help had from the highly eccentric course of 
 the fire itself, due in good part to the efi'ect of its own intense 
 heat in turning the heavy wind from the prairies into whirls
 
 " ; ^KAK^ OK <;A>^ SKR\UK in t'HICA<.<) 
 
 21 
 
 and eddies. Along the north branch both above and below North 
 Station, tlie billowing' flanu-s surged and leaped. But from the 
 junction of the north branch with the river north nearly to 
 Ohio Street, and again opposite Goose Island and west of 
 Crosby Street, there was no fire though the quarter of a mile of 
 buildings between these two areas was swept over and every 
 house therein destroyed. 
 
 The Twenty-second Street works of the Peoples Company 
 were of course untouched. But there is no record of any gas 
 being supplied from this source to the North and South Sides, 
 nor was there any tunnel across the River available for that 
 purpose. The demand for gas was greatly decreased, of course, 
 by the loss of shops, offices, and residences, 17,000 in number in 
 these two divisions, and the North Station, newly built and 
 working at capacity, its connecting mains through town and 
 under the River unharmed, sufficed to supply the houses still 
 standing as soon as the leakage could be stopped amidst the 
 ruins of the burnt district. 
 
 Improvements and Extensions 
 
 .\ week after the fatal Monday, on October 17, 1871, W'alkins 
 was elected a Director of the Chicago Company, new offices were 
 occupied in place of those destroyed at No. 76 Dearborn Street, 
 and other steps taken to repair and mitigate the damages 
 suffered. Before the end of the year it was decided not to rebuild 
 on the old site in Adams Street but to rush the work on the South 
 Station. Early the next year the sale of the property there 
 
 Fire Enitlne uu.l 
 
 iiird-ay of ( JiUmU" MlKdirKul Soiiely
 
 28 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 began. On January 13, 1873, Elias T. Watkins was elected 
 President of the Company, Judge Hugh T. Dickey retiring 
 after more than twenty-two years of service in that capacity. 
 The new station at Eleanor and Loomis Streets began operat- 
 ing on November 15, 1874. Work was begun at another station 
 at Thirty-first and Halsted Streets to supply gas to the rapidly 
 growing district to the southwest. An additional 3300,000 was 
 ordered expended on the North Station, doubling its capacity 
 for production and distribution. Five miles of mains were laid in 
 1872, eight in 1873, and soon, until in 1881 the Chicago Company 
 had more than 200 miles of supply pipes in use and of sizes in- 
 creasingly large. The Peoples Company, also showing a steady 
 increase in the volume of its business, in 1881 completed its 
 works at Division Street and Elston Avenue, still in operation. 
 It may here be mentioned that the dividends paid by the 
 younger Company in 1874, amounting during the year to three 
 per cent, were the only dividends paid while A. M. Billings was 
 in authority. 
 
 Hyde Park and Pullman 
 
 There were other manufacturers of gas soon in the field, and one 
 of the humors of the situation was the purchase in 1879 of the 
 private plant that the Tremont House had been attempting to 
 run. These other gas companies were situated at the time of 
 their beginnings outside of the city limits, though the areas they 
 served were all included within Chicago in the general sweep of 
 June 29, 1889, when the western metropolis swallowed all its 
 neighbors in readiness for the World's Columbian Exposition of 
 1892 and 1893. 
 
 The first of these was the Hyde Park Gas Company, which 
 was incorporated May 26, 1871, under a general statute for the 
 formation of manufacturing, mining, and other companies. Its 
 term was fixed at fifty years, and the village of Hyde Park 
 empowered the Company to build a plant and lay its mains 
 north of the center line of Sixty-seventh Street, with a clause 
 providing for the purchase of these by the village. 
 
 George M. Pullman included gas works in the Pullman Com- 
 pany's plans for its manufacturing suburb at Pullman in 1880 
 and they were operated until the Supreme Court decided that was 
 beyond the powers accorded in the Company's charter. The entire
 
 -C > KAKx OK <:AV sKR\U K I\ C HU\(,f> 
 
 equipment was acquired by the Peoples Company, on Septem- 
 ber 1, 1899, usable parts were removed, and the ma^ufacturiIl^,' 
 plant dismantled. A similar fate, so far as removal and dis- 
 mantling are concerned, eventually overtook the jMaiit of the 
 Hyde Park Company. 
 
 Lake and Lake View 
 
 The Lake Gas Company was incorporated November 2, 1881, 
 under the general incorporation law of 1872. Its business was 
 confined to the town of Lake under an ordinance to the North- 
 western Gas Works Company, which was assigned to the Lake 
 Comptany. 
 
 Here may be included the Suburban Gas Company, formed on 
 September 30, 1884, under the general law, to lay mains and 
 supply gas in the city of Lake \'iew. This concern was a subsi- 
 diary of the Chicago Gas Light and Coke Company, whose 
 charter limited its direct operations to the city of Chicago. The 
 Suburban bought its gas from the Chicago Company and dis- 
 tributed it through its own mains, having no manufacturing 
 facilities. After annexation to Chicago in 1889 it sold its property 
 to the Chicago Company for }^600,000. 
 
 With the passing of the year 1881 the period of divided areas 
 without competition also passes, to be followed by si.xtcen years 
 of intense competition before the need for consolidation became 
 a necessity as apparent as it was absolute if justice was to prevail, 
 whether to stockholder, bondholder, consumer, or municipality.
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Multiplication 
 
 Active competition in manufacturing and selling gas in Chicago 
 was ushered in by the organization of the Consumers Gas Fuel 
 and Light Company on December 30, 1881, under the general in- 
 corporation act of 1872. Its incorporators were well known 
 figures in the city's mercantile and political life, including 
 James W. Brockway, Allen C. Calkins, a successful lumberman, 
 George H. Harlow, Marcus A. Farwell, a wholesale grocer and 
 long the president of the Oakwoods Cemetery Association, and 
 the Hon. Richard S. Tuthill, a good lawyer and admirable 
 judge for many years in the Circuit Court. 
 
 On April 29, 1882, the Company was granted authority by the 
 city council to lay gas mains in the streets of Chicago — anywhere 
 in the city. At this time the Chicago Gas Light and Coke Com- 
 pany was confining its operations to the North and South sides 
 and the Peoples Company to the West side. The Consumers 
 Company bound itself not to charge more than ^1.75 a thousand 
 feet for its product, with a rebate of 25 cents a thousand to 
 customers using more than 100,000 cubic feet a year. Combina- 
 tion with any other company concerning the price of gas or 
 transfer of any of its rights to another concern was forbidden.
 
 •^C YFARS OF CAS SFRVICK IN CHICAGO II 
 
 The Consumers Company proceeded to the erection of a 
 plant at Twenty-fourth Place and Canal Street, to lay mains, 
 and to compete actively for business with the older companies. 
 The Chicago Company reduced the price of gas, which had been 
 $\.7S since May 3, 1880, to }^1.25 a thousand feet in the Kail of 
 1883, and, after the Consumers had entered the West Side 
 through a tunnel under the river at Taylor Street, the Peoples 
 Company reduced its price to J^l.50 to meet the new compe- 
 tition. But the Consumers Gas Fuel and Light Company found 
 its undertaking too heavy. To finance it, a trust deed for 
 J52,000,000 was given to Dumont Clarke and bonds issued to 
 that amount. This was foreclosed in the United States Circuit 
 Court on July 15, 1886, and the property bouL'ht in In John T. 
 Lester, who continued the business. 
 
 From Light to Heat 
 
 Thereupon the Consumers Gas Company was organized on 
 August 9, 1886, with a capital stock of J^5,000,000 which was 
 subscribed for by a number of prominent men, the largest share 
 being that of Frederick P. Addicks, secretary and treasurer of 
 the earlier concern. The Directors chosen were Columbus R. 
 Cummings, William S. Rayburn, Sidney A. Kent, W. H. 
 Ryder, Charles T. Yerkes, E. Washburn, J. Edward Addicks, 
 John B. Cohrs, and C. E. Judson, the last named being Presi- 
 dent, with C. F. Bryant the Secretary. The Consumers Gas Com- 
 pany then bought the Consumers Gas Fuel and Light Company 
 property held by John T. Lester under foreclosure. The charter 
 powers of the new company were broad; they included the right 
 to sell gas for illuminating, heating, and other purposes, and to 
 buy or lease gas works or gas companies in Chicago or elsewhere 
 and to improve, enlarge and extend, maintain and operate or 
 demise the same. Thf mention of gas for^'hfating" here first finds 
 place in local gas history. Among other things the new Company 
 proceeded to do was to sell gas to its former competitors. 
 
 The use of the word "Fuel" in the title of the first Consumers 
 Company and thereafter by others in connection with the mak- 
 ing of gas for "heating" is significant at this time as showing the 
 trend of the gas business away from the sole purpose of providing 
 light, which has been stressed almost exclusively up to this time. 
 In the coming shift the discovery and commercial use of natural
 
 32 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 gas, especially in the neighboring State of Indiana, was to have 
 an important part, as will presently be nianifest. But the con- 
 clusive factor was the growth of electric lighting, due so largely 
 to the inventive and organizing genius of Thomas A. Edison. 
 In October, 1878, the engineer of the Chicago Gas Light & 
 Coke Company newly returned from visiting the Universal 
 Exposition in Paris, mentioned electric lighting for the first 
 time and then rather as an experiment than as an accomplished 
 fact. But it was destined to remove gas from the field of illumi- 
 nation to a degree fairly inconceivable at that time, and send it 
 on its way to supplying a cheap, clean, and entirely manageable 
 fuel, at first for domestic uses in cooking wholly subordinated to 
 lighting, and then more and more to domestic heating and after- 
 ward, following the manufacturing use of natural gas in the 
 middle eighties, to every purpose for which heat under complete 
 control can be utilized in manufacturing and industry. 
 
 Emphasizing A Turning Point 
 
 One unexpected result of the entrance of competition in the 
 gas business in Chicago affords a rather curious little prophecy 
 of this. In the strenuous efforts of competing companies to retain 
 or obtain customers, various novel inducements were held forth 
 and among these were hot plates and nursery burners, given 
 free to persuade patronage rather than to increase the con- 
 sumption of gas. There were simple and inexpensive devices for 
 cooking at home through the agency of a rubber tube attached 
 to the nearest gas burner, yet they were the foreshadowing 
 of the highly efficient and elaborate gas ranges of today, white 
 enameled and nickel plated, and the pride of many a house- 
 keeper in parts of the city supposed to be populated by merely 
 poor and honest people. Only some dozen of years comes be- 
 tween the introduction of such plates and burners and the re- 
 ported sale by the Peoples Company up to December 31, 1898, 
 of a total of 20,343 gas stoves, a number now exceeded annually. 
 Thisisanopportune place, although out of line chronologically, 
 for citing certain fundamental changes which have come to the 
 gas business, as seen both from the inside and the outside, in 
 direct descent from that early employment of gas for heat instead 
 of light, as in the hot plate and the nursery burner.
 
 The gas stove literally forced itself upon the aitcntion of gas 
 companies. By 1K98, as reflected in the annual report of the 
 Peoples Companj- for that year, gas stoves had become so sale- 
 able and the eflPect of their use upon company income had be- 
 come so obvious that pushing the sale of them soon took rank 
 as a major gas company activity. That was a turning point in the 
 gas business in Chicago. 
 
 Establishinji Cas as Fuel 
 
 The proved practicabiliiy of gas as a fuel opened up possi- 
 bilities never dreamed of before and even then only partially 
 sensed. As illustrating the latent market, it is still told how one 
 ingenious salesman mounted a gas stove on a one-horse wagon, 
 drove out into the foreign language neighborhoods, ran a rubber 
 hose from the stove to a street lamp and gave open air demon- 
 strations that produced orders for gas stoves faster than they 
 could be filled. 
 
 Interest in seeing that the stoves sold were dependable for 
 continuous service naturally followed. Krom tliis it was but a 
 step to specifications that would promote reliable stove-building 
 and to testing laboratories for proving the results. 
 
 Aggressive campaigning for new business by developing new 
 uses for gas and new users of it, commercially and industrially 
 as well as domestically, which is now a major item in gas com- 
 pany practice, really dales from that 1898-1900 period. It marked 
 the beginning of a transformation whereby the gas business 
 eventually became of less concern as a feature of the stock 
 market and of greater concern as a manufacturing and mer- 
 chandising and community-serving industry. But before this 
 transformation could be completed or the progress of it even 
 clearly seen, the gas business in Chicago had to go through a 
 long period of travail compounded of illogical competition, clash 
 of financial interests, political huckstering, re-actionary legis- 
 lation and samples of practically cver\' known form of corporate 
 affliction. 
 
 Moves and Countermoves 
 
 The Equitable Gas Light and Fuel Company was incorporated 
 August 3, 1885, for ninety-nine years with a capital stock of 
 33,000,000 to make "gases of all kinds" and dispense the same in 
 Chicago and vicinity, with a restrictive clause against combi-
 
 34 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 nation with any other concern. Its incorporators and officers 
 were also interested in the Peoples Gas Light and Coke Company. 
 
 On November 16, 1885, the Illinois Light, Heat and Power 
 Company was organized by forces friendly to the Peoples 
 Company. This Company never asked permission to lay mains; 
 its business was solely making and selling gas. It took over the 
 shop and station at Division Street and Elston Avenues. 
 
 This Division Street plant is historically important as the 
 first one in Chicago designed and built for the manufacture of 
 carbureted water gas exclusively — that is, without any coal 
 gas benches— although water gas had been made here earlier. 
 
 Water Gas Arrives 
 
 Professor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe obtained patents in 1872 on a 
 process (more properly, on the apparatus essential to the pro- 
 cess) for making carbureted water gas. This process is, with 
 slight modications, still in use. The product is "carbureted 
 water gas," commonly called "water gas," because a hydrogen 
 gas is made by passing steam through incandescent beds of coke 
 or coal and is then "carbureted" or enriched by adding other 
 elements derived from oil. 
 
 This invention revolutionized gas making. It gave gas lighting 
 a new lease of life, in competition with the electric lighting of 
 those days, because carbureted water gas made a better light 
 than coal gas. The naphtha and crude oil used in making it 
 were then abundant and cheap and there were little or no by- 
 products, which, in coal gas making, were becoming an embar- 
 rassment for lack of a profitable market for them. The labor 
 required to run a water gas plant was only a fraction of that 
 required for a coal gas plant. 
 
 Some water gas appears to have been made at the Twenty- 
 second Street works of the Peoples Gas Light & Coke Company 
 about 1879 or 1880, but the Division Street plant, begun in 
 1882 and put into operation in 1883, was as stated the first 
 exclusively water gas plant. Before 1890 all of the gas works in 
 Chicago were making water gas and the old coal gas process 
 had been entirely abandoned. 
 
 On February 16, 1883, Theobald Forstall was employed as 
 superintendent and general manager of the Chicago Gas Light
 
 75 VEARS OK CAS SKRVICK IS' CHICAGO 7< 
 
 & Coke Company, becoming also a Vice-President and Director. 
 His reports for the year 18S5 and 1S86 indicate that the com- 
 pany's plant capacity and facilities had become inadequate. 
 Its maximum daily production has been forced to 5,300,000 
 cubic feet of gas while the purifiers and holders had a capacity 
 for only 4,000,000. A more agressive policy began to show re- 
 sults in better manufacture and better service by 1886. No 
 doubt this was stimulated by the competition of the Consumers 
 Company which was still active. From the beginning of the race 
 in 1883 the Chicago Company recorded a loss of 7867 customers 
 of whom 4935 had been recovered in 1886, while the net gain 
 from new business was 9627 over all loss. 
 
 Competition and Compromise 
 
 On March 12, 1887, Elias T. Watkins resigned as President 
 and Forstall was elected in his place. At the same time a com- 
 plete change was effected in the Board of Directors, reflecting 
 the entrance of interests which had been concerned in promoting 
 the Consumers Company. Men who had been identified with 
 the corporation almost from its beginning gave place to Colum- 
 bus R. Cummings, Jacob Rehm, Sidney A. Kent, William L. 
 Elkins, P. A. B. Widcner, and others, the two last named being 
 residents of Philadelphia. 
 
 Just before, in May 1886, the spirit of competition invaded 
 the Chicago Company's seemingly assured conservatism and it 
 secured permission to lay mains under the river for the invasion 
 of the People's preserves on the West Side. In July the invader 
 was halted by an injunction. Eventually the courts held that 
 the agreement between the two old companies not to compete 
 was void, contrary to public policy, and so on. But competition 
 was not a part of the policy of the Chicago company's new 
 directorate, nor of the Peoples Company. For a radical change 
 in government had also taken place there. 
 
 In June, 1882, C. K. G. Billings, the younger son of 
 Albert M., was graduated with honors from Racine College and 
 forthwith installed by his father as superintendent of the 
 Peoples Company. He was not yet of age, but his early and 
 continuing interest in its affairs warranted his employment. In 
 April, 1884, he was elected Vice-President and in 1887 made a
 
 36 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 Director. His father's policy of paying no dividends worth 
 mentioning (though it had given the company a very strong 
 position), and of meeting competition by radical reductions in 
 gas rates, made little appeal to him. He therefore allied himself 
 with the eastern interests now in control of the Chicago Company 
 which were buying stock with a view to consolidation. A con- 
 test between father and son ensued, conducted in the best of 
 spirit. Youth won. On April 28, 1888, A. M. Billings having 
 resigned from the Presidency, C. K. G. Billings was chosen his 
 successor. From 1862 to 1888 under the father and from 1888 to 
 1910 under the son, there was forty-eight years of Billings con- 
 
 Consolidation Frustrated 
 
 The Chicago Gas Trust Company was organized under the 
 general incorporation Act on April 7, 1887, to put the gas busi- 
 ness in Chicago under consolidated control. At the beginning of 
 1887 the eight companies already particularized were functioning 
 as such, but they were controlled by four, the Chicago, the 
 Peoples, the Consumers, and the Equitable. The Gas Trust 
 bought the controlling interest in these four and proceeded to 
 handle the situation under a trust agreement. This first attempt 
 at a general consolidation was the beginning of complicated 
 litigation that ran on for nearly ten years. One after another 
 the courts nullified every expedient that lawyers could devise 
 under then existing statutes for effecting consolidation. 
 
 Back of all this litigation was the implied belief that con- 
 solidation was essentially an evil.The whole question, solely one 
 of economics and therefore of demonstrable proof, was thrown 
 into partisan politics, not always scrupulous before, then or 
 since, which took it out abruptly from the realm of science and 
 reason into the misty borderlands of prejudice and emotion. 
 Just as the old competition had resulted and was resulting at 
 the moment in duplicated and wasteful efforts to be borne 
 ultimately by the community, just so the emotional and spas- 
 modic attempts to cheapen the price of gas without a careful 
 weighing of every factor entering into its manufacture, one of 
 the most important and least regarded of these being the main- 
 tenance of the financial credit of the Companies, resulted in a 
 wild war of loose words, needless indignation, and wasted legal 
 proceedings, again at the expense of the community.
 
 -C NKAR>i OK <;AS sKK\UK IN I HIIAC.O 17 
 
 Going back in this complicated narrativcother companies had 
 entered the field in the meantime in addition to those already 
 mentioned, and these must be taken into due account in the 
 final outcome. 
 
 More Competition 
 
 On October 30, 1885, came the Calumet (las Company which 
 operated in the village of Hyde Park and chiefly in the region 
 near the Calumet River with a plant at Ninety- sixth Street 
 and Houston Avenue, still in use. 
 
 Another Hyde Park concern, the Mutual Fuel (^as Company, 
 was incorporated on April 20, 1889. Its plant at Seventy-third 
 Street and Langley Avenue made an almost odorless water gas 
 'that lent itself to accidents and the process, otherwise admirable, 
 had to be changed. It also became a distributor of the product 
 of the Universal Gas Company, incorporated July 16, 1894. 
 The Universal's plant at Pitney Court and Thirty-first Street 
 (still in use) was at the time reputed to be the largest gas factory 
 in the history of the industry, having a capacit)- of 12,(XK),(XXJ 
 cubic feet a day. It remained primarih' a manufacturing con- 
 cern, selling its gas chiefly to the Mutual Fuel Company but 
 eventually to the older corporations. 
 
 For the more complete entanglement of Chicago's gas 
 affairs the Chicago Economic Fuel Gas Company was launched 
 on July 8, 1890, and authorized at first to distribute only fuel 
 gas, a limitation later removed by the city council. Pursuant to 
 its original fuel gas intention, it utilized the Indiana Natural 
 Gas and Oil Company to bring natural gas into the city. Ensued 
 one of the most destructive periods of competition. The Econ- 
 omic Company, as nearly as one can come at the facts from this 
 distance, appears to have been backed by Eastern financial inter- 
 ests and its chief purpose seemed to be to force "recognition" by 
 the older and more prosperous companies. Eventualh' the 
 Economic ceased to compete. 
 
 Last of Gas Wars 
 
 The last and one of the most energetic of the competing concerns 
 was the Ogden Cjas Company, organized on February 23, 1895, 
 and given a fift)-year franchise by the city council with the 
 now usual provisions forbidding merger with another company,
 
 38 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 reserving to the city the right to purchase, and so on. The com- 
 pany was bound to sell gas to private users at 90 cents a thousand 
 cubic feet net, which was ten cents below the prevailing rate, and 
 (another innovation) to pay the city annually 33^ per cent of its 
 gross income. Mains were laid through a considerable district 
 on the North Side and a plant was built at Kingsbury and Willow 
 Streets that could make between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000 cubic 
 feet of gas a day and is still effective for distribution. 
 
 Meanwhile the legislature had passed an act in 1897 which 
 permitted consolidation of all gas companies in Chicago and 
 much of the consolidating had been effected, as will appear in 
 the next chapter, but the Ogden was still an independent, selling 
 gas at 90 cents and extending its business. The Municipal Gas 
 Company, organized on August 27, 1900, leased the mains of 
 the (consolidated) Peoples Company lying in Ogden territory, 
 bought gas of the Peoples Company, began selling it at 60 cents 
 in competition with the Ogden's charge of 90 cents, and even 
 went down to 40 cents. Such impracticable rate cutting could 
 not continue long. The Municipal Company eventually dropped 
 out and in a few months its charter was surrendered. Absorption 
 of the Ogden Company later on ended the illogical and unecon- 
 omic era of competition in the gas business.
 
 l>f'i^ 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Consolidation 
 
 On June 5, 1897, Governor John R. Tanner signed "An Act in 
 Relation to Gas Companies" which had just been passed by the 
 general assembly of Illinois. By its provisions any gas company 
 was authorized to sell its property and franchises at will to 
 another gas company in the same city, and any gas company was 
 permitted to merge and consolidate with another into a single 
 corporation, which could be either one of the two so merging. 
 
 Under this enabling act, on August 2, 1897, the Peoples Gas 
 Light and Coke Company took into its organization its venerable 
 senior, the Chicago Gas Light and Coke Company, and its vari- 
 ously aged juniors, the Consumers Gas Company, the Illinois 
 Light, Heat and Power Company, the Lake Gas Company, the 
 Equitable Gas Light and Fuel Company, the Suburban Gas 
 Company, and the Chicago Economic Fuel Gas Company. The 
 stock of the absorbing Company was exchanged for that of the 
 absorbed at various rates as settled by mutual agreement, and 
 the Peoples Company assumed 5^29,046,000 in bonds issued by 
 the absorbed companies. 
 
 Although the stock of the Hyde Park Gas Company was 
 controlled by the Consumers Company, to the rights of which 
 the Peoples Company had now succeeded, it did not come within
 
 40 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 the scope of this initial merger, but was finally taken over Janu- 
 ary 10, 1898. On the same day the stock of the Mutual Fuel Gas 
 Company was retired and cancelled and itself included in the 
 body politic of the Peoples. 
 
 On November 25, 1898, the Calumet Gas Company was taken 
 in. On November 1, 1900, a contract was made for purchase of 
 the Ogden Gas Company in 1945, subject to any prior right of 
 the city to buy it. This was followed by an ineffectual attempt 
 by the city authorities to revoke the Ogden Company's rights. 
 
 On July 12, 1906, the Peoples Company acquired the Indiana 
 Natural Gas and Oil Company by guaranteeing its bonds and 
 continued to receive and distribute in portions of the city natural 
 gas from this source until 1917. The properties of the Ogden and 
 Universal Companies were leased on January 1, 1907; six years 
 later they were absorbed by commutation of future rentals and 
 guarantee of their bonds. 
 
 Taking Inventory 
 
 This final feat of ingurgitation finished and good digestion 
 assured, the history now goes back to 1897, the year of consoli- 
 dation from which the Peoples Company was henceforth to date 
 its rounded existence as a public utility. Reporting progress at 
 the end of that year, it had sold more than five and a quarter 
 billion cubic feet of gas, had nearly 1,320 miles of street mains, 
 162,000 meters in use, and 29,000 street lamps. The saving was 
 apparent from bringing under one management the various cor- 
 porate entities that had been maintaining a separate existence 
 to comply with judicial decisions rendered in the ten years since 
 the unsuccessful attempt to form the Chicago Gas Trust, though 
 anticipated in part in the meantime; in comparison with the 
 proportionate expense of the several organizations, in 1886, for 
 instance, the saving was strongly marked. 
 
 Survey of the ground, so often disturbed and still to be dis- 
 turbed by rival concerns, showed much duplication of dis- 
 tributing facilities, but those could be viewed as anticipations of 
 the rapidly growing wants of Chicago, itself growing not only in 
 population but to an even greater degree in the use of gas, as 
 had been the case from the beginning. The use of incandescent 
 gas mantles (Welsbach's invention), whereby greater light was
 
 -; VFARS OF GAS SERVICE IV CHICAGO 4I 
 
 10 be had at a smaller cost, was still in course of development. 
 The two companies taken in during the year were making money 
 and a help rather than a hindrance. Cias was selling at f>l a 
 thousand cubic feet net and its cheapness encouraged its use. 
 
 Constructive Readjustments 
 
 The officers of the consolidated Peoples Company, as elected 
 on August 2, 1897, and re-elected for years to come were: 
 President C. K. G. Billings; \'ice-Presidcnts A. X. Brady, Wal- 
 ton Ferguson and C. K. Wooster; directors, C. K. CJ. Billings 
 md F. S.Winston of Chicago and A. N. Brady, Walton Fergu- 
 on, and R. P. Flower of New York, the latter being the former 
 ::overnor of New York. On Mr. Billings' removal to New ^'ork 
 Cleorge O. Knapp became president of the Company in 1901. 
 He was succeeded by James F. Meagher in 1913, he by E. G. 
 Cowdcry in 1915, and he by Samuel Insull in 1919. It was to be 
 many years after consolidation before the company returned 
 to strict home rule in respect to chief officers and directorate. 
 
 The years following consolidation, for a couple of decades or 
 more, were to be years of readjustment and constructiveness. 
 There were to be marked changes in business methods and in 
 relations with customers, as well as in relations with the public 
 through governmental agencies; the business was to be largely 
 freed eventually from the guerrilla warfare of local politics, but 
 not without much harassment and travail for yet many years. 
 
 Prior to the consolidation of 1897, it was becoming a practice 
 to fix the price of gas for five year periods by agreement with 
 the city authorities, the city having no power to fix rates. 
 
 Rate Questions Arise 
 
 In effecting consolidation in 1<S97 it was agreed that the price of 
 gas should be not more than the lowest rate of any constituent 
 company at that time which made the rate one dollar net. By 
 1906 the net rate had come down to 85 cents for the 1906-1911 
 period. In preparation for the next five-year period, the city 
 council employed accountants and engineers to inquire into the 
 costs of manufacturing and distributing gas, including a valua- 
 tion of the company's property, an inquirj' in which the com- 
 pany fully co-operated.
 
 42 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 The report of the experts fixed 11 cents as the minimum that 
 could be fairly charged at any time in the five-year period. This 
 report was disregarded and another, not made by anyone taking 
 part in the inquiry, was adopted, setting the price of gas at 
 75 cents for the first year, 70 cents for the second and third 
 years, and 68 cents for the last two years of the five. In this the 
 city council was acting under a state statute passed in 1905 
 which purported to give the city power to fix the price of gas, 
 but the validity of which was not recognized. The company had 
 to go to court to protect itself against this confiscatory rate 
 schedule, and the tedious and complicated consequences came 
 to be known as "the ten million dollar refund case." 
 
 By injunction and court order which the company obeyed, 
 the price of gas was fixed at 80 cents net. After the liti- 
 gation had been dragging some years, a customer went to 
 court for a refund, the outcome of which was a Supreme Court 
 decision that the legislative enactment of 1905, purporting to 
 empower the city to fix rates, was invalid and that the city 
 council's 75-68 cent rate schedule was therefore null and void. 
 Meanwhile changing business conditions, a world war, state 
 legislation, collateral litigation and politics further complicated 
 the "ten million dollar case". 
 
 State Regulation Arrives 
 
 Following the example of New York, Wisconsin (a LaFollette 
 influence there) and other states in "progressive" legislation, the 
 Illinois Legislature in 1913 passed a law creating a state Public 
 Utilities Commission, since 1921 called the Illinois Commerce 
 Commission. This body was given regulatory authority over all 
 public utilities of the State, including of course gas companies. 
 Plenary power to investigate, to fix just and reasonable rates, 
 and to settle disputes arising between the utility and its patrons, 
 was reposed in the Commission, subject only to review by the 
 courts. The act was a serious attempt to settle economic ques- 
 tions through scientific inquiry rather than through politics. Not 
 least in its provisions was that requiring public utilities at all 
 times to promote the safety, health, comfort, and convenience 
 of patrons, employees and public.
 
 ~s YFAR^i OK (JAS SKRVICP IN (MHl'-ACr) 4 -^ 
 
 City authorities resisted and in some measure denied the 
 authority of the Commission as superior to that wliich the city 
 government had assumed to exercise over public utilities. Pend- 
 ing ultimate and uncontested fixation of the Commission's 
 authority, the Peoples Company sought to avoid friction in this 
 relation by trying to reach agreements with the city authorities, 
 on all questions that were in any degree disputed, before going 
 to the Commission for final action. The matter of changing gas 
 standards illustrates how its experiences were not always happy 
 ones. 
 
 Some Difficulties Linger 
 
 Though required by ordinance to supply gas of only twenty-two 
 candle power, the company had long been giving its customers 
 an illuminant of twenty-four candle power, as demon- 
 strated and noted with approval in the report to the city council 
 in the spring of 1911. To deliver gas of so high an illuminating 
 value in the mains much "gas oil" had to be used for "carburet- 
 ing" or enriching it. Meanwhile the importance of this illuminat- 
 ing value in gas had been declining and had become almost 
 negligible, and calorific or heating value had become the first con- 
 sideration in fixing a standard of quality. 
 
 Electric lighting had displaced much of the use of gas for 
 lighting. The use of gas for cooking and other heating purposes 
 in commerce and industry, where its illuminating value was of 
 no account, had immensely increased. Even where gas was still 
 used for lighting, its illuminating or candle power value had 
 become negligible because the most efficient and economical gas 
 lighting was by means of the incandescent mantle light and this 
 called only for the presence of heating value in the gas. A gas of 
 little or no candle power derived from enrichment by "gas oil" 
 made as good a light in an incandescent mantle as a high candle 
 power gas. 
 
 Gas oil is a petroleum product. Formerly both rich and cheap, 
 the demands of the war for gasoline, coupled with the fabulously 
 growing use of motor cars in the United States, led to extracting 
 from it much of its former richness and at the same time increased 
 its price. It therefore took more oil at a higher cost to produce 
 gas. True in 1915, it became truer in 1916. In 1915 4^3 cents a 
 gallon for gas oil was thought extremely high; in 1916 a poorer
 
 44 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 oil brought 5}/i cents. This increase of one cent meant an in- 
 creased cost of nearly five cents a thousand cubic feet in making 
 gas. In 1915 gas oil cost the company 32,080,284.43; in 1916 the 
 figure rose to 33,295,751.35, an increase of 31,215,466.92. At the 
 same time coal and all other elements of manufacture were 
 growing increasingly costly and were to continue so. 
 
 New Troubles Multiply 
 
 The company sought in 1915 to take steps to mitigate the situa- 
 tion by approaching the city authorities for an agreement on 
 the factors involved before going to the State Commission. It 
 was more than two years and a half later, on June 25, 1917, that 
 the city assented to withdraw opposition to elimination of the 
 candle power standard, to a modernized sliding scale of rates, 
 and to greater use of coal gas in coping with new conditions. 
 Nor was this all. On account of war time wage and labor con- 
 ditions, coupled with financial pinches of which the gas oil detail 
 was an example, efficiency in certain departments of the company 
 became sadly impaired in 1918. Errors in monthly bills led to 
 appeals to the Utilities Commission and to much clamorous 
 criticism of the company. As illustrating only one phase of the 
 financial effects, deferred payments of monthly bills rose from 
 31,346,769.20 at the close of 1917 to 32,218,233.69 in 1918, a 
 temporary loss to the company of 3871,463.49 of which 3330,- 
 465.45 became a permanent loss in accounts written oflt. This 
 heavy penalty was paid by the company for a condition that 
 never was as bad as painted. The erroneous bills that caused all 
 the clamor totalled only 120,000 out of 8,000,000 sent out that 
 year, or about three in 200. 
 
 Relief Disastrously Delayed 
 
 The company and its stockholders sufi'ered grievously from 
 the accumulation of the specified and collateral troubles, be- 
 ginning with the city government's delay in responding to the 
 appeal on the candle power and gas oil situation in 1915, and 
 running on through war time conditions. Relief from the candle 
 power standard, rate readjustments and other expedients came 
 too late. By the time a proposed remedy could be worked 
 through the red tape and delays of governmental bodies, the 
 rapid changes of war time would make it ineffective.
 
 75 VEARS OF CAS SERVICK IV CHICACO 4 If 
 
 Thenetearningsof ihcCompany which had been 33,292,467.98 
 in 1914, fell to 33,228,965.59 in 1915. This "net" fell again to 
 32,077,258.16 in 1916. In 1917 after bond interest was paid there 
 was a deficit of 3365,201.35 and a greater one of 31,366,928.54 in 
 1918. In 1919 there was a small surplus over ojH'raling costs ami 
 bond interest of 3^)5,207.4^) and a surplus of 3380,752.02 in 1920, 
 but the "net" became normal oiih- in V)2\. 
 
 On account of these heavy losses, the dividend rate, which 
 had been eight per cent, was reduced to six per cent in May, 1916, 
 and to four per cent in May, 1917. After August, 1917, dividends 
 ceased until January, 1922. The credit of the company was 
 heavily impaired and it may be said to have weathered the 
 storm only through the good will and confidence of its bankers — • 
 or, more exactl}', the confidence of the bankers in the new man- 
 agement that took hold of the company at the beginning of 1919.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Resurrection 
 
 Samuel InsuU had taken a place on the company's directorate in 
 1913, and become chairman of the board. During the war prac- 
 tically all of his time and attention had been absorbed by his 
 service as head of the State Council of Defense of Illinois. When 
 released from war work, he was moved by the situation of the 
 company to assume personal responsibility for its management 
 in all detail and in February, 1919, he was elected its President. 
 Effects were noticeable almost immediately but considerable 
 time had to pass before the effects became financially productive. 
 
 The company had to have rate re-adjustments or go headlong 
 to financial ruin. It was selling its product at rates fixed before 
 the war on a basis of pre-war prices and operating costs, and it 
 was paying war time prices for labor, material, and everything 
 else it bought. It was therefore operating at a positive loss, a loss 
 that was at the rate of 310,000 a day for a considerable period. 
 But the clamor and public hostility stirred up by the trouble of 
 1918 made adequate rate readjustments hard to get. Members 
 of the state Utilities Commission being only human, were hesi- 
 tant to do even partial justice in the face of general — or what 
 seemed to be general — public hostility. To alleviate this situa-
 
 -C YEARS OF GAS SF.RVKi: IN CHICAGO 47 
 
 tion, creation of a friendlier "alinospliere" became an important 
 part of the new manaKemeni's job. It is worth mentioning that 
 in the doing of its job, the "new management" comprised only 
 Mr. Insull and a couple of personal assistants; otherwise the 
 executive, sub-executive and working organization of the com- 
 pany was unciianged. 
 
 Rate Adjustment Comes 
 
 In the face of the company's distress — operating at a loss 
 under already inadequate rates — the state Commission on June 
 19, 1919, ordered a reduction in rates amounting to approxi- 
 mately four per cent. Losses continued to mount, but bettered 
 service to customers and the creation of an all around friendlier 
 atmosphere was coming to be fell; so a substantial rate readjust- 
 ment upward was asked for on April 20, 1920, and after an ex- 
 haustive hearing was granted on June 20. Meanwhile the Com- 
 mission was conducting a thorough inquiry into the value of the 
 company's property which had been started on September 24, 
 1919. Throughout all previous negotiations or litigation touch- 
 ing rates, the value of the company's property and the amount 
 of return it was entitled to earn on that valuation had never 
 been established, although the company had tried hard to have 
 this done. 
 
 The Commission'svaluation inquiry was completed on Decem- 
 ber 21, 1920. It set the valuation of the company's property 
 "used and useful" in the manufacture and distribution of gas as 
 of January 1, 1920, at 385,(XX),000. This included allowance for 
 going value and working capital but excluded the Peoples Gas 
 Building and other property not essential to the business of 
 making and selling gas. The Commission also found that the 
 company was entitled to annual net earnings equivalent to seven 
 and one-half per cent on this valuation, or }56,375,(XX) annually, 
 subject to increase in proportion to subsequent increases in 
 the capital investment. 
 
 Getting A New Plant 
 
 Important operating efficiencies and economies were also 
 effected in 1919 and subsequent years, but the best that could 
 be done with existing plants was not enough. As far back as 
 1911, engineers were convinced of the desirability of re-intro-
 
 48 
 
 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 ducing a certain amount of coal gas making, combined with 
 water gas making, provided the out-of-date candle power 
 standard of gas quality could be eliminated. 
 
 A site for a coal gas plant was acquired — 373 acres — at Craw- 
 ford Avenue and 35th Street, on the drainage Canal and con- 
 struction was begun but was soon halted by delay in getting 
 action on the candle power question, as already noted. When 
 that obstacle had been eliminated the company was financially 
 unable to proceed. The Koppers Company of Pittsburgh was 
 eventually interested to finance and build for the Company a 
 combination coal and water gas plant on the Crawford Avenue 
 site. This was done through a subsidiary of the Koppers Com- 
 pany, the Chicago By-Product Coke Company. 
 
 The new plant was put into operation on October 10, 1921, and 
 has since been added to. It is one of the largest gas plants in the 
 world and is said to be the last word in efficiency and economy. 
 
 Michigan Ave. at Adams St. in 1871. — Site of present Gas Company's Building
 
 7C VKARs OF CAS SF. R\ICF. IN CHICAGO 4O 
 
 A large part of the coke produced in making coal gas there is 
 used in other gas making operations at the same plant ami in the 
 seven water gas plants of the IVoplcs Company, and a surplus 
 is marketed for domestic and blast furnace use. The plant 
 represents an investment of about }^2S,(XX),(XK), exclusive of the 
 land. Kventually it is to be the property of the Peoples Com- 
 panv, which has the right to take it over any time after Feb- 
 ruary 1, 1926. 
 
 This plant with its connections, strategically located for mass 
 production and economical distribution of gas, is the key to gas 
 service planning for the future. It is designed for expansion, as 
 necessary, to five times its present capacity. A 4K-inch main 
 running southward from it to Seventy-first Street and north- 
 ward almost to the city limits is the backbone of a distribution 
 system, with adequate holder (storage) capacity to assure an 
 ample gas supply for the industries as well as the homes of 
 Chicago now and in years to come. The need of reckoning with 
 the future is emphasized by the fact that while the population 
 of Chicago has been increased twenty-three per cent in the 
 last ten years the consumption of gas has increased fift\-fivc 
 per cent. 
 
 Dividends Resumed 
 
 As a consequence of this regenerative work in both the 
 tangibles and the intangibles of the business, the company was 
 able to resume, in January, 1922, the payment of quarterly 
 dividends to stockholders for the first time since August, 1917. 
 The significance of this is reflected in an observation by John J. 
 Mitchell, the veteran banker and a Director of the company, on 
 the day the Board of Directors voted the first of resumed divi- 
 dends. "This," he said, "is the most striking example of corporate 
 resurrection that I have ever seen in all of my banking exper- 
 ience." Dividends have continued at the rate of five per cent 
 per annum in 1922, six per cent in 1923, seven per cent in 1924 
 and eight per cent in 1925. Meanwhile satisfactory rc-adjust- 
 mcnts of salaries and wages to employees have been made and 
 the price of gas to all customers has been reduced twice since 
 the re-adjustment of June, 1920. 
 
 It is worthy of note that the company has finally achieved 
 a close approach to really scientific rate making, designed to
 
 50 
 
 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 promote greater use of gas, in quantity, for industrial and house 
 heating purposes. The rate schedule now in effect closely follows 
 the rate making principles that have been such a potent factor 
 in the sensational growth of the electrical business, enabling the 
 acquisition of a great volume of business from very large users, 
 to the collateral advantage of all users, including the smallest 
 ones. 
 
 Gas and Laboratory Problems 
 
 The wholesale use of gas in manufacturing points the future 
 development of the industry. At the present moment one-fiftieth 
 of the customers are using nearly one-third of the total output 
 and several of these each use weekly twice as much gas as all 
 Chicago used in a twelvemonth seventy-five years ago, and as 
 much as suffices the entire needs of such a city as Ottawa, 111. 
 The company's laboratory, which began its work with the be- 
 ginning of the company, has taken on new significance in the 
 light of these developments. There the problems of the various 
 arts are worked out, and manufacturers are shown by demon- 
 stration the advantages of gas as a fuel for every desired purpose. 
 As the fuel use of gas both industrially and domestically has 
 come to overshadow use of it for lighting, the importance of gas- 
 burning appliance efficiency has grown. Hence the increasingly 
 intensive attention given to making it easy for customers to buy 
 
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 7< VFARS OF CAS SERVICE IN CHICA(;() CI 
 
 appliances of assured efficiency. The first store for selling appli- 
 ances that the company could stand back of was opened more 
 than twenty years ago. There are now fourteen, besides the 
 store at Michigan Avenue and Adams Street, all located for 
 their convenience to centers of population, each one also housing 
 a branch office of the company where monthly bills can be paid 
 and all kinds of business transacted directly with the company. 
 In the interest of efficiency, the selling of appliances and re- 
 lated merchandise has all been handled since 1920 by a sub- 
 sidiary, the Peoples Gas Stores, Inc. 
 
 Executive Organization Realigned 
 
 In March, 1922, a Home Service Department was inaugurated 
 to promote more home cooking by providing free expert advice 
 in the preparation and serving of meals. It was opened in two 
 small rooms in the basement of the Peoples Gas Building. 
 Within a month eager housewives were sitting on the stairs. At 
 the present time the entire basement is given up to the depart- 
 ment's demonstrations, five branches of the department are 
 operating in connection with outlying stores, there is a kitchen 
 on wheels which travels through the residence sections of the 
 town for the same purpose, and a monthly bulletin of suitable 
 recipes and a radio service are in use. 
 
 !__-, 
 
 Chicago. 1925 
 
 UBRARY 
 UNfVERs/nr OF lUiNOlj 
 W I'RBANA CHAMP-ION
 
 52 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 In 1924 the company's executive organization was re-aligned. 
 Samuel Insull is President and associated with him as Directors 
 are Messrs. John J. Mitchell, James A. Patten, Stanley Field, 
 and Martin J. Insull, all of Chicago. There are also five Vice- 
 Presidents* John H. Eustace in charge of operations, who super- 
 vises all activities having to do with gas production and distri- 
 bution; George F. Mitchell in charge of finance, who supervises 
 the offices of the secretary and the treasurer and the purchasing, 
 stores, claim, and traffic departments; Bernard J. Mullaney, in 
 charge of public and industrial relations, who supervises the 
 relations of the company with the public and with its employees, 
 including service to customers, advertising, employment, medi- 
 cal service, welfare, training and education, safety, restaurant, 
 and employees' representation; Theodore V. Purcell in charge of 
 sales, who supervises the new business, the industrial and 
 home service departments, and the operation of Peoples Gas 
 Stores, Inc.; William A. Sauer, in charge of accounts, who 
 supervises the offices of comptroller and auditor, and all the 
 accounting, bookkeeping, auditing, and allied departments.
 
 ^.^d---^ i^_ ^ '^ 
 
 Lll MM IK \ II 
 
 Progression 
 
 Kxtcrnal relations, with government, with stockholders, with 
 the public, are set forth in much detail in the printed annual 
 reports of the Peoples Gas Light and Coke Compan\', but com- 
 paratively little can be said in these about the hardly less im- 
 portant relations between the management with the emplo)ees. 
 Vet in these more private matters the activities are so numerous 
 and so pervasive that it is no exaggeration to say that nothing 
 in the lives of those in its service is of unconcern to the Com- 
 pany as effecting personal efficiency, whether it is in the nature 
 of such preventives as training and education, providing amuse- 
 ments and recreation for the wise use of leisure, and securing 
 an easy justice, or such curatives as care in illness and old age for 
 physical ills or the alleviation of worries and troubles for ills 
 more insidious. 
 
 To begin with, it has long been the Company's policy to make 
 all its promotions from within its own ranks, beginners in its 
 service starting at or near the bottom with an open chance to 
 work up. While there may be instances in which an infusion of 
 fresh blood from without might have been advantageous in 
 managerial positions, this is more than made up by the security 
 felt throughout the organization, not only that the present job 
 is safely in hand but that diligence and ajiplication are certain of 
 their rewards, a certainty that mingles ambition with content- 
 ment and insures long periods of service with little labor turn- 
 over. It will be seen how other policies make to the same end.
 
 54 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 Industrial Relations 
 
 Perhaps the most important of these, since even the smallest 
 injustices bulk large to those who suffer from them, may be 
 seen in the Department of Industrial Relations, under the super- 
 intendency of one of the Vice-Presidents, and one of the most 
 striking of the department's activities is found in the employees' 
 representation plan, set in motion by order of Pres. Insull on Jan. 
 1, 1921, and assuring the rights of free assembly and free speech. 
 
 There are now about 320 representatives, equally divided 
 between management and employees, who, for greater ease in 
 handling business, are organized in twenty-one councils, meeting 
 in fourteen groups with allied interests, and always on the 
 Company's time. There is a fixed basis of representation; there 
 are deputy or alternate representatives to insure an adequate 
 attendance and all duly nominated in primaries and elected by 
 secret ballot. These councils aiford a ready and serviceable 
 means for discussing conditions of employment, clearing up 
 apprehensions, remedying injustices small and great as they 
 arise, developing an American assertiveness, rendering harmless 
 what are called on shipboard sea-lawyers, and educating in 
 self-government and morale. 
 
 Now in its fifth year of operation, Employees' Representation 
 is held to be of increasing value in promoting cooperation be- 
 tween departments, bettering relationships with the gas-con- 
 suming public, increasing an understanding of the aims of the 
 Company, preventing disputes and ensuing dislikes, developing 
 tolerance and open-mindedness, and in general clarifying al- 
 most every conceivable situation. 
 
 Social Relations 
 
 There is a Peoples Gas Club open to all employees, which began 
 in 1911 as a club for boys only. This led in the succeeding year 
 to a series of lectures by thirty of the superintendents and mana- 
 gers covering nearly every phase of the Company's activities, 
 and later in the year caused the club's privileges to be thrown 
 open to everybody in the service. It has thus grown from a 
 membership of thirty to more than three thousand. 
 
 Its objects, well lived up to through the years and quite past 
 the experimental stage, are set forth as "The promotion of 
 Good Fellowship by providing employees opportunities to get
 
 75 YEARS OF GAS SERVICE IN CHICAGO (^ ^ 
 
 together for purposes of Education, Entertainments, and parti- 
 cipation in Clean Sports." It publishes The Peoples Gas Club 
 News, with its subject matter and cartoons furnished by the 
 members, and this has a growing interest and popularity. It is 
 to be noted that all of its officers have earned promotion. Its 
 activities, past or present, include a choral society, private 
 theatricals and vaudeville, picnics, luncheons, dinners, dances, 
 a drill corps, six competing baseball teams, basketball, field 
 sports, and an annual Christmas party for the children of mem- 
 bers which is an enormous success. 
 
 During the summer of 1923 the Company acquired an interest 
 in the Lake Lawn Hotel Company, with an hotel, cottages, and 
 camping facilities on Lake Delavan, Wisconsin, where vacations 
 are spent at a minimum of expense to employees and their 
 families. Education and Training 
 
 The education of foreign-born employees in the interests of 
 Americanization began in 1919, and it has already served and is 
 serving men and women of thirty nationalties. The Company 
 itself has had evening classes, sending many also to the public 
 night schools. In September, 1921, there were 456 working for 
 the Company who had not taken the first steps toward naturali- 
 zation. On April 22, 1923, there were none. The effort is contin- 
 uous to the end that every employee shall be a voting citizen or 
 on the way to becoming one at the earliest possible date. 
 
 The Library was opened in the Peoples Gas Building in 1911 
 and now contains 3500 volumes and many periodicals, popular 
 and technical. It is used both for information and recreation, for 
 reference and circulation, and is in constant demand. The 
 librarian is in charge of the general work in training and educa- 
 tion. There are lecture courses on the gas business economics 
 and many other topics, classes in public speaking, and a practi- 
 cal course in letter writing for everybody concerned, from the 
 150 dictators of correspondence to the stenographers, typists, 
 calculating machine, mimeograph, and multigraph operators, 
 and proof readers. There are also study classes for girls, which 
 teach home hygiene, sewing, dressmaking and millinery, first 
 aid, and practical cooking, all of them popular. 
 
 In 1921 began the system, elaborated three years later, of 
 rewarding employees for every suggestion made that will help
 
 56 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 the Company and themselves to attain its ideals of manufacture, 
 sales, and service, including the elimination so far as possible of 
 error. All suggestions are now sent in and referred anonymously 
 to a practical committee. The smallest cash award is $5, the 
 largest yet given $250. When not adjudged of worth enough to 
 earn a cash prize, merit marks are given, which earn monetary 
 reward when enough are accumulated. 
 
 Annuities, Insurance, Thrift 
 
 The Company has had service annuities in effect for many years, 
 by which pensions running from 325 to 350 a month were granted 
 fordisabilitythrough superannuation or otherwise, according to 
 circumstances. In June, 1912, the system since in effect was 
 adopted. The amount of the annuity is arrived at by averaging 
 the salary or wage received during the last five years of work and 
 multiplying two per cent of this by the number of years employ- 
 ed, the minimum being 325 and the maximum 3500 a month. 
 
 In lieu of a Christmas turkey, there was adopted on December 
 24, 1921, a comprehensive plan of gift insurance as a present 
 from the Company and annually renewed. Under it those who 
 have been in the service more than six months but less than a 
 year are given a minimum policy for 3500, and so on up year by 
 year until the maximum of 31500 is reached on and after six 
 years. In addition all eligible employees are permitted to take 
 out an equal amount of insurance at cost, simply by asking for 
 it, with a conversion privilege if they leave the service of the 
 Company. At the close of 1924 there were 3839 employees in 
 every grade thus provided for to the total amount of 34,204,500. 
 There is also a liberal death benefit practice, voluntarily applied 
 by the Company when circumstances warrant it. 
 
 Systematic saving and investment is definitely cultivated, for 
 which there is a Savings and Investment Fund supervised by 
 responsible company executives. In the current fund, employees 
 of the company have accumulations amounting to approxi- 
 mately 31,500,000. 
 
 A considerable number of employees have become stock- 
 holders in the company during the few years since inauguration 
 of the policy of interesting the public in general and the em- 
 ployees of the company in particular in becoming owners of its 
 stock. The total number of stockholders in the company has
 
 75 YEARS OF CAS SF.RVICK IN CHICAGO 57 
 
 nearly doubled in live years. On January 1, 1925, the company 
 was owned by 9,452 stockholders of whom 5880 lived in Chicago 
 and 6817 in Illinois, removing the last vestige of absentee owner- 
 ship. 
 
 Illness and Kmert^encies 
 
 Sick benefits arc paid to all, whether in receipt of salaries or 
 wages, and all so afflicted are regularly visited and their cases 
 kept under constant and watchful care. Loans without interest 
 are also made when the need is urgent, and these are held as 
 strictly confidential. 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting service thus rendered is in 
 personal advice and assistance, which has been stretched to 
 cover nearly every imaginable situation. There were 955 of 
 these cases in 1924, the nature of which may be roughly classi- 
 fied thus: 477 were concerned with illness and death, 374 with 
 business and monetary affairs in and out of the Company, 89 
 with legal matters, 35 with domestic difficulties, and many others. 
 There is also considerable co-operative buying of food, clothing 
 and household necessities which help to ease the cost of living. 
 
 It would seem as if nothing could possibly arise and, so arisen, 
 be capable of betterment by understanding, sympathy, advice, 
 and the intelligent use of large financial resources and far- 
 reaching influence, that cannot be met and cared for on the 
 instant, whether for those directly in the Company's service or 
 for the members of their families. 
 
 For women, there is further provision made through the dean 
 of women, appointed in 1919, who has direct charge of the six 
 hundred or more feminine employees. She supervises their em- 
 ployment, also their discharge when due cause arises, and acts 
 as an adviser in every case where advice is needed by a woman 
 from a woman both kindly and understanding. 
 
 General \N'elfare 
 
 Both annuities and insurance are grouped under the general 
 head of Employees' Service in the Industrial Relations De- 
 partment and there is also provision made remediall)- for any- 
 thing which may unfavorably affect the condition of the em- 
 ployee. To the manager and his aids he may go for monetary, 
 medical, or legal help of every sort or for amelioration of any of 
 the diverse adversities which beset the life of man. The Com-
 
 THE PEOPLES GAS LIGHT & COKE COMPANY 
 
 pany makes a direct appropriation for the usual cases of this 
 nature, but there is in addition a substantial sum of money- 
 available from a source less direct, the origin of which possesses 
 interest. 
 
 In July, 1913, George O. Knapp resigned as President and 
 Director of the Company after thirteen years of service as such, 
 with a much longer connection in positions less exalted, and was 
 duly awarded the maximum annuity of ^6000 annually. After 
 a twelvemonth of monthly checks in payment of this, he re- 
 turned the entire amount, asking that his name be retained 
 throughout his life on the annuitants' list, but that the present 
 sum and all future amounts be placed in the trust then created 
 and to be known as the George O. Knapp Benevolent Fund, for 
 the relief of situations not otherwise provided for in which money 
 wisely spent can be of service; a beneficence as wise as it is 
 original, since it leaves the department with means to cope with 
 
 any situation. 
 
 Universal Benefit 
 
 Human aifairs are likely to proceed best, historians would have 
 us believe, when governed by enlightened selfishness arrived at 
 through mutual compromise. In the chapter foregoing this 
 appears to be made unusually plain. So large a share of self- 
 government is secured to the employees through their councils 
 that complaints of undue paternalism are deprived of cogency. 
 It would be difficult to state whether the individual is more 
 interested in the terms of his employment, in his health, his rec- 
 reations, his security, or the security of his family; all are un- 
 questioned factors in that total which constitutes happiness. 
 
 The Company is interested no less, but it leaves participation 
 in the various advantages and activities not strictly provided for 
 in the contract of hiring entirely in the hands of the person hired. 
 No one is compelled to belong to the Peoples Gas Club, to accept 
 an annuity or gift insurance policy, a sick benefit emergency, 
 loan, welfare aid, or a chance for education and training, and 
 the rest. Participation in these is entirely voluntary and there is 
 no discrimination against those who refuse to participate. 
 
 If any or all of these tend to make an individual better and 
 happier the Company is helped in working out its policies. If 
 they make him a better citizen, the betterment is shared by 
 Company. Community, and Country. 
 
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