the country. We were in a position to cope with the requirements of the people in our gas area, and also to obtain the best results in an approved way from the minerals used. The expenditure was heavy - over £50,000, but the results, year after year, justified the outlay. A reform I was very keen on in those days was the abolition of meter rents. There were hundreds of consumers paying 3s. per annum in rent whose consumption of gas did not exceed two thousand cubic feet, costing them 5s. After adding to this the rent of meter, their gas came out at 4s. per thousand, whilst the cost of gas and meter rent to large consumers, say of 25,000 cubic feet, worked out at only 2s. 8d. per thousand cubic feet. I was unable to convince my colleagues of the desirability of abolition, which fortunately became loss imperative a few years Inter. When the automatics, with a penny in the slot payment came into use, I succeeded in helping on their use amongst the artisans who were using paraffin, until we had over 12,000 users of this class of meter.
The threat had no effect; it required the presence of the police to disperse the crowd. During one of the nights when we had the greatest difficulty in keeping up a supply, two councillors (one a Labour representative and the other a publican, at whose house the strikers met) managed to get inside the works and were found persuading the men at work to throw up their jobs. They refused to leave when spoken to by the manager. On the matter being reported to me, I sent for a constable, who quickly had them outside the gates. We had no further interference of that kind, and were a few days later successful in arriving at a settlement. Happily there has been no serious trouble since.
The net total profits in this period were £110,869, the highest being £8474 in 1906. The
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