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we take it that there is a powerful Company supplying 90 per
cent. or 89 per cent. of current—80 per cent. of the possible current
—or the current for which the main was laid, and the other
simply supplying 10 per cent. or 20 per cent., the condition of
competition then would be absolutely unfair and unequal.
Then, of course, there is another objection to which I have already
briefly referred, and it is this, that now the space in the streets
is absolutely—well almost entirely—filled. There are at the
present time, I am informed by the Gas Company, no less than
six mains along Piccadilly, which has a width of something like
39 feet in its narrowest part, and those mains are actually
charged with gas, in addition to the dead mains of whose
existence the Gas Company have no knowledge; so that if the
principle of competition were admitted we find that actual
competition—not merely potential competition—(because that
is not sufficient), but effective competition, would be physically
impossible, because there would be no room to lay more mains
than for one or two Companies at the most. So that we have
arrived at this conclusion: that in theory it would be wise to
apportion London between different Companies. We would
district London; but we are placed in this condition at the
outset. Are we in a position yet to say that any system of
electric light is applicable to any particular area? The battle
of alternating and continuous currents, of course, has been
fought out here, and will have to be fought out in actual practice.
The conclusion arrived at by the Vestry is this: That while in
theory they say that the wisest course to pursue, both to the
consumer at the present time, to the shareholders at the present
time, and also to the local authorities, in the eventuality of
their acquiring the undertaking at the end of the 42 years—we
say that we have not yet arrived at a stage at which one can
say that a certain Company is the best for a certain district of
London, and a certain other Company is best for another
district Are we out of the experimental stage?
I think, Sir, the evidence of Mr. Ferranti will show you that
practically the whole system of the London Electric Supply
Corporation is experimental. We are to have a dynamo constructed
very much larger than any dynamo that has ever yet
been erected. We are to use the concentric main, and not the
concentric main only but the rigid concentric main. This