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Old Lamps for New: The Failed Campaign to Bring Electric Street Lighting to Salt Lake City
Old Lamps for New: The Failed Campaign to Bring Electric Street Lighting to Salt Lake City
By JUDSON CALLAWAY AND SU RICHARDS
The future visited Zion on the 10th and 11th of August, 1880. On that particular Wednesday and Thursday, William Washington Cole’s world-touring “Circus, Menagerie, Aquarium and Congress of Living Wonders” encamped on Salt Lake City’s Washington Square to exhibit its inventory of marvels to the enthusiastic crowds which gathered from every ward of the city and from the rural communities beyond. Traveling shows were well known to Utahns, thanks to the territory’s new rail connections; but Mr. Cole brought something new to the mountain metropolis—“the sun-eclipsing electric light.” 1
Sun eclipsing or not, the electric light—or more correctly the electric arc light—made its American debut four years earlier at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, when a rudimentary arc lamp and dynamo designed by American inventor Moses G. Farmer and manufactured by William Wallace, a brass and copper founder in Ansonia, Connecticut, excited modest interest among exposition visitors. The light’s impact on the public imagination, however, was nothing compared to that of Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone or George Henry Corliss’ gargantuan steam engine. In America, the light’s commercial prospects were anything but promising. Not so in Europe, where Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov (Anglicized as Paul Nicholas Jablochkoff), an enterprising Russian expatriate inventor living in Paris, had devised an arc lamp suitable for commercial applications. Dubbed the “Jablochkoff Candle,” each lamp consisted of parallel carbon rods that when charged with electricity formed an incandescent “arc” at their tips. For the electricity, Yablochkov turned to Zénobe Théophile Gramme, a fellow expatriate, whose forte was designing high performance dynamos. By the time Cole pitched his big top on Washington Square, Yablochkov and Gramme were illuminating streets, public squares, dockyards, and theaters in Paris, London, and other European cities. Masters of the electric light in Europe, Yablochkov and his financial backers made preparations to send their new lamps across the Atlantic. 2
Charles Francis Brush
Electric lighting in America lagged behind its European counterpart until, in the nation’s centennial year, Charles Francis Brush, a young iron merchant turned electrical engineer, patented a dynamo superior to the celebrated Gramme machines. Then, in 1877, Brush designed an arc lamp which was more reliable, efficient, and economical than the Jablochkoff Candle and produced a better quality light in greater quantity. Aided by the generous patronage of the Telegraph Supply Company of Cleveland, Ohio, the young inventor designed increasingly sophisticated dynamos and lamps, which became hugely profitable additions to the company’s product line. By the time Cole exhibited his Brush dynamo and arc lamps in Salt Lake City, the Telegraph Supply Company (re-christened the Brush Electric Company) was the largest manufacturer of electric lighting apparatus in the world. 3
Meanwhile, back in Salt Lake City, Cole’s circus and its electric light had left behind a vision of the future the city would not forget and which some of its residents would seek to realize. One witness, a reporter for the Deseret Evening News, recorded his personal testimony to the new illuminator. “[T]he electric light is a novelty, emitting a soft and brilliant luster like magnified moon-light, and causing the ordinary [gas] lamps to look yellow and foggy as if beaming through smoke.”4 A week later, on August 8, 1880, the Western Mining Gazetteer reported General Patrick Edward Connor, proprietor of the Great Basin Smelter, had “ordered the necessary machinery and will light his reduction works at Stockton, Utah, with the electric light.” 5 The Salt Lake Daily Tribune took up the story on August 24 informing its readers that Mr. F. C. Phillips, representing the Brush Electric Company, had arrived from Cleveland to install electric lights at General Connor’s works in Tooele County as well as at the Old Jordan smelter in Salt Lake County. The Tribune also shared with its readers Phillips’ vision of Salt Lake City’s streets illuminated by electric lamps more brilliant and efficient than the gas lamps then in use. His plan was “to build a tower, costing about $1,000 and on top to place four [electric arc] lights, each having 2,000 candle power.” This, Phillips claimed, would light the entire city and “. . . at the distance of half a mile . . . make the finest print legible. Its beauty would be great and its cheapness certain. The machine, motive power, tower, etc., could be built for $4,000 . . . and expenses of maintaining the lights, including pay for engineer, fuel for the engine, etc., will not be more than $2,500 a year.” 6
Mr. Phillips did not remain long in Utah. When the Tribune reported on September 3 that a trainload of distinguished guests had visited Stockton to see General Connor’s new lamps in operation, Phillips was not mentioned; instead, Charles Conrad Ruthrauff, former city editor of the Cleveland Sunday Morning Voice, represented the Brush Company. In short order, the Brush company’s new man in Utah set in motion a vigorous campaign to make Phillips’ vision a working reality. 7
George Washington Stockly
Electric lighting was introduced to Utah by three remarkable Clevelanders. The most directly associated with the territory, and the only one known to have personally been present was Charles C. Ruthrauff; the others were the inventor Charles F. Brush and his patron George Washington Stockly, vice president and general manager of the Telegraph Supply Company. Brush’s technological contributions have been mentioned, but his inventive genius might have counted for little without the financial backing of George Stockly. Stockly underwrote Brush’s early experiments. When Brush’s inventions were ready for the market, Stockly turned them over to a corps of aggressive marketers—among them Charles Ruthrauff—for commercial exploitation.
Brush lamps and dynamos went on sale in 1877 and, in January 1878, the inventor traveled to Cincinnati to install the company’s first lighting system at the office-residence of Landon Longworth, a prominent physician. At 4,000 candle power, Brush’s lone lamp blazed as brightly above the waters of the Ohio as five of Yablochkov’s candles above the waters of the Seine, making Dr. Longworth the owner of the world’s most powerful porch light. More substantial deals followed, including one with Philadelphia dry goods magnate John Wanamaker, who purchased five dynamos and twenty arc lamps to illuminate the display windows of “Wanamaker’s Grand Depot” on Market Street. 8
The first Brush systems were small direct current dynamos able to “burn” up to four lamps in separate circuits. Similar to Gramme- Yablochkov and Wallace-Farmer systems, they worked well if a few lamps were required (as at the Connor smelter), but were less satisfactory when several lamps were needed (as at the Wanamaker department store). Unlike his rivals, Brush understood the advantage of operating multiple lamps in a single circuit and made it his business to devise the necessary technology. In 1878, Brush completed work on his model No. 6 dynamo, a more sophisticated machine capable of burning six lamps in a single circuit. It was the first use of the “series” circuit and a fundamental advance in electric lighting technology. In series circuits, the current passes through each lamp in the system, the total voltage required is equal to the sum of the voltages required by each lamp (that is, six 50-volt lamps require 300 volts; sixteen 50-volt lamps require 800 volts; forty 50-volt lamps require 2,000 volts)— hence the need for more powerful dynamos. Series circuits also require lamps which, if extinguished (either intentionally or by accident), will not interrupt the circuit and shut down the entire system like a bad bulb in a string of Christmas tree lights. The inventor solved this problem by equipping his lamps with a cut-out mechanism which automatically shunted
current around extinguished lamps. Finally, Brush developed a regulator which automatically adjusted current strength to accommodate changes in load (for example the number of lamps in operation). Here was the technology necessary to distribute electric light to multiple consumers from a central generating station. When Brush’s No. 7 dynamo, a sixteen-lamp series circuit machine, entered the market in 1879, central station lighting became possible in quantity. Then, as Ruthrauff was ratcheting up his electric lighting campaign in Zion, Brush completed work on the No. 8 dynamo, a behemoth able to power forty lamps in a single series circuit. 9
Despite Ruthrauff’s best efforts, Salt Lake City was not the first city illuminated by a central electric lighting station. In San Francisco, William Kerr, president of the San Francisco Telegraph Supply Company, and an equally energetic agent, represented the Brush company. San Franciscans were already acquainted with electric lighting, thanks to Joseph M. Neri, a Jesuit priest and professor of physics at St. Ignatius College. The city was also one of the few in America where Jablochkoff Candles were in regular use. Two of the alien lamps were in service outside the offices of the city’s Chronicle newspaper, whose editor, Charles de Young, had brought them and a Gramme dynamo from Paris in 1878, hoping to promote the Franco-Russian lighting system in America. 10
Another technology-minded San Franciscan was George H. Roe, who acquired a Wallace-Farmer dynamo and arc lamp as a debt settlement, but failed to find any profitable use for the equipment. Roe tried building a dynamo of his own, but that, too, failed. Still unwilling to give up on electric lighting, he joined with other local businessmen and, on June 30, 1879, incorporated the California Electric Light Company. Meanwhile, Kerr organized an electric lighting demonstration at Mechanics’ Pavilion using Brush equipment and installed Brush dynamos in the Palace Hotel and at the Union Iron Works. He also secured from George Stockly an exclusive license to sell Brush equipment in California, Nevada, Oregon, and the Washington Territory. He then launched a Ruthrauff-like marketing campaign along the Pacific Slope. In San Francisco, Kerr and Roe came together to outfit the California Electric Light Company with a Brush No. 7 dynamo, a four-lamp, multi-circuit machine, and several automatic cut-out lamps. When the company’s plant at Fourth and Market streets commenced operation in September, Kerr and Roe conferred upon San Francisco the distinction of being the first city in the world with central station electric lighting. 11
Brush "two-lamp" dynamo, probably a model No. 3 and similar to the ones sold to General Connor and used for the electric lighting demonstrations at ZCMI and the Horn smelter. Note the double-commutator and double pair of binding posts at left.
Charles F. Brush created the technology that made electric arc lighting commercially practical, George W. Stockly marketed that technology, and Charles C. Ruthrauff delivered it to Utah. A young man of twenty-seven when he joined Stockly's corps of electric light drummers. Ruthrauff superintded an electric light demonstration at Connor's Great Basin smelter on September 2, 1880, and then conducted a similar demonstration in the heart of Salt Lake City. That demonstration took place on September 11 at teh Main Street store of the Zions Co-operative Mercantile Institution, more usually called "the Co-op" or simply "ZCMI." 12 At the time he was arranging the ZCMI demonstration, Ruthrauff was also negotiating with Marcus Daly, mine manager for the Walker brothers who owned the Alice silver mine in Butte, Montana Territory, and it was the mine's surface workings than manager Daly hoped to illuminate with Brush arc lamps. 13 By the end of 1880, Ruthrauff had sold a second plant to General Connor and arranged to install systems at the Horn, Germania, Old Jordan, and Morgan smelters in Salt Lake County, as well as at the Horn silver mine at Frisco in Beaver County. 14 However, selling "isolated" lighting plants was not Ruthrauff's only--or even his most important--ambition, for he promptly set about kindling on the shores of the Great Salt Lake the same electric fire Roe and Kerr had successfully ignited beside the Golden Gate. Ruthrauff set himself the task of illuminating Zion, not just with electric light, but with electric light from a central station.
It is not known how or when Ruthrauff conceived such a revolutionary concept. The San Francisco company may have been his inspiration, or he may have hit upon the idea independently, encouraged by the readiness of the Walker brothers and other Utah capitalists to embrace electric lighting. Regardless, it was well developed by the time of the ZCMI demonstration. Given the expense and effort needed to mount even a one-night electric light demonstration, it is unlikely Ruthrauff’s chief objective was simply to advertise his isolated lighting plants. Timing and location—Saturday night in the business district—suggests that the city’s merchants, not the territory’s mining and smelter magnates, were his intended audience. Ruthrauff’s choice of venue also hints at an effort to garner “grassroots” support for arc lighting. Organized by Brigham Young in the late 1860s, ZCMI was the premier Mormon “home enterprise” and symbolized the Latter-day Saints’ phobic determination to keep their economic destiny out of the hands of “strangers.” The endorsement—albeit passive—implied by the electric light’s association with the Co-op might allay local suspicion and, in any event, could do his plans no harm.
Ruthrauff may also have been looking for endorsement by association when he struck a deal with Charles W. Penrose, the new editor of the Deseret Evening News, to borrow the steam engine which ran the paper’s presses. 15 The printing plant was located on the northeast corner of East (Main) and South Temple streets, from which point temporary wires were strung on telegraph poles to temporary lamps set up across the street at ZCMI. Details of the agreement between the agent and the editor are not known, but even if it was strictly a cash-and-carry arrangement, Ruthrauff could expect to gain a measure of good will by association with “Our Grandmother,” as the stridently anti-Mormon Tribune frequently styled the premier journal of the Latter-day Saints. 16
Subsequent events, however, demonstrated that editor Penrose’s sympathy for the new lighting technology was more apparent than real. On the morning of September 12, the Salt Lake Daily Tribune and the Salt Lake Daily Herald, bitter rivals on almost every other issue, each declared the ZCMI exhibition a triumph. The Deseret Evening News offered a more restrained assessment, emphasizing (where the Tribune and Herald only noted) the tendency of the electric light to flicker. The Evening News acknowledged Ruthrauff’s explanation that the borrowed steam engine was to blame, but offered its own theory:“Instead of being caused by the motive power, such as a steam engine . . . . the unsteady light is said to be due to the action of the carbon pencils as they move toward each other to be gradually consumed by the electric current. This unsteady movement, which causes the flickering, is said to be inseparable to the burning of the pencils.” 17
The Deseret Evening News had a point. Reciprocating steam engines of the day could not maintain the uniform speed needed to produce uniform voltage. Small variations in speed, which did not affect conventional machinery, caused the voltage of dynamos to fluctuate and lamps to flicker. It was a defect inherent in all electric lighting systems at the time and differed from the flickering caused by the irregular movement of lamp carbons. Brush minimized that problem with a regulator which automatically adjusted the carbons, but there was little the inventor could do to control engine speed. Even Brush lamps were susceptible to current fluctuation. Gas lamps suffered from a similar defect, albeit for different reasons, but the Evening News chose not to mention that and asserted repeatedly the flicker phenomenon made arc light inherently inferior to gaslight. 18
On the evening of Tuesday, September 14, following the ZCMI demonstration, the Salt Lake City Council, received a formal proposal from the Brush agent to illuminate Zion’s business district and adjoining neighborhoods in the same fashion as Phillips’ proposal. The proposal appeared the next morning in the Tribune and the Herald.The Tribune, never in doubt as to what the city council should and should not do, favored its readers with an editorial preface:
That afternoon the Evening News reported “[a] proposition was made to the city council last evening for illuminating the city for five years by the electric light at a cost considerably less than that of gas,” assuring readers the proposition would “receive due consideration . . . and while the good points of the new light are accorded their full value . . . proper regard will doubtless be paid to existing contracts and agreements, according to their letter and spirit . . . [emphasis added]. 20 Although not explicitly stated, “existing contracts and agreements” referred to the city’s street lighting contract with the Salt Lake City Gas Company.
What Ruthrauff was suggesting was nothing if not audacious. In exchange for the five-year contract mentioned by the Evening News, and an annual remuneration of six thousand dollars, Ruthrauff promised to organize a company and illuminate the city’s streets:
This he and his associates would do if the council granted them “permission to erect an ornamental iron tower with a base about six feet [square] and 200 feet high, at some point at the intersection of Main and First South streets, so as not, however, to interfere with the present street car tracks . . .” Ruthrauff also asked his company be given “all the privileges now enjoyed by the gas company, in so far as stoppages by reason of accidents are concerned, and binding ourselves to protect the city in the case of failure to the same extent now guaranteed by the gas company.” 22
As for the actual contract between the proposed electric lighting company and the city, Ruthrauff explained that he and his unnamed associates “expect to light the city under such contract by the gas schedule now in use,” adding “[i]f the city will furnish us, daily, water power sufficient to run a ten-horse power motor, we will deduct $800 from the above estimate.” Conceding “there will be occasional shadows of trees and houses,” the man from the Forest City assured the council “even with the shadows, the electric light will be such as to enable people to more safely and conveniently get about than by the present use of gas;” the light “is such as to admit of the safe carrying on of ordinary traffic as far out from the central tower as a distance of over two miles.” Ruthrauff also promised his lighting company would post an “ample” performance bond and ask no payment “until after the formal acceptance of the light by the city council in accordance with the above proposition.” 23
Arc lamps and electrical apparatus manufactured by the Telegraph Supply Co. (later the Brush Electric Co.), of Cleveland, Ohio. Lamp No. 1 (extreme left) is a double-carbon lamp intended for street lighting and other extended-use purposes. An automatic cut-out device made it possible for several lamps to operate in a single series circuit. No. 6 is a current regulator which permitted individual lamps to be switched on and off without adjusting the dynamo. Referred to as "Dials," regulators were used with the Brush No. 6, 7, and 8 model dynamos and were essential to central station electric lighting.
The city council referred Ruthrauff's proposal to its standing committee on improvements, which invited the Brush agent to meet with its members, Alderman Henry Dinwoodey and Councilors Joseph F. Smith and Thomas E. Taylor (son of LDS church president John Taylor), to explain his plan in detail. The meeting took place the day following when, the Tribune reported, "Mr. Ruthrauff...placed before [the committee] sufficient evidence upon which to base a favorable report. It soon became apparent that the Council would not accept the [electric lighting] proposition unless the gas company was taken care of." 24 This condition could not have please Ruthrauff, but it could hardly have surprised him. Across the country, gas companies were rising in opposition to the emerging electrical lighting industry, marshaling their considerable financial and political muscle to quash the new technology in its infancy. Ruthrauff would expect as much in any city with an established gas lighting company, and especially in Salt Lake City, where the municipal government was one of the gas company’s principal stockholders. As one arc light critic observed, the city’s gas investment was not just a valuable asset worthy of protection, the dividends it paid were a dependable source of revenue; representing, in effect, a substantial rebate on the city’s hefty gas bill. 25 Even if the committee and the council were disposed to favor Ruthrauff’s proposal, they would have been poor civil servants had they ignored the financial interests of the city vis-à-vis the gas company.
The special relationship between the city and the gas company was an obstacle to Ruthrauff’s plans, but one he approached with confidence and cunning. From the outset, he tried to minimize the threat arc lighting posed to gas interests, insisting gas and arc lighting were not only compatible but complementary. Articulating an argument that became the standard electric lighting message, Ruthrauff dismissed arc lighting as a potential competitor with gas in illuminating homes, offices, and commercial and industrial establishments of moderate size, which in the aggregate constituted the most lucrative segment of the lighting market. He claimed, instead, that only in the less valuable realm of large-space and outdoor illumination were arc lamps superior to gas lamps. 26 Such reassurance might persuade those with no financial stake in the gaslight industry, but it did little to assuage the fears of gas company executives and their stockholders. Ruthrauff, former journalist that he was, could “spin” his proposals with great dexterity, but he was too good a marketer to rely on artful words alone—even his own—and so looked for other means to secure the city fathers’ approval.
His next move was to attack the gas company’s credibility with the public in general and the city council in particular. After meeting with the city’s improvement committee, Ruthrauff went to the gas company’s directors with an offer he likely hoped they would refuse: he would sell the gas company the necessary apparatus so that it could itself illuminate the city’s streets. (It was Deseret Evening News editor Penrose, after all, who suggested electric lighting was a service “home talent” should provide.) Here, Ruthrauff anticipated a common Mormon objection to “foreign” entrepreneurs like himself, that enterprises promoted by “strangers” deprived Utahns—or, at any rate, Mormon Utahns—of their “inheritance,” which siphoned scarce cash from the territory and hindered the “upbuilding of Zion.” Artfully, the Brush agent turned the xenophobic tables by shifting the onus of providing the benefits of the new illuminating technology onto the shoulders of the “home” illuminating company. It was a bold maneuver that could be easily defeated by simply accepting the offer. But, even if the gas men accepted his offer, it did not necessarily threaten the Brush agent’s plan for a central electric light station—on the contrary, it would be a compelling demonstration of the electric light’s utility. In San Francisco, the California Electric Light Company was prospering, not by illuminating the city’s streets, but by peddling its ethereal wares to stores, hotels, and saloons. In any event, on September 21, Thomas W. Ellerbeck, superintendent of the gas company, met with his board of directors who agreed to refuse Ruthrauff’s offer. 27
Councilor Joseph F. Smith, associated with Salt Lake City Council's Committee on improvements.
A week later, Ruthrauff went back to the city council with a new proposal. The technical details were more-or-less the same as in the September 14 proposition, the important change being the financial arrangements. Before, $30,000 had been the price asked for five year’s lighting service. Now the price was $25,000, with $17,500 for the electric company and $7,500 to buy-out the gas company’s street lighting contract. In the wake of the company’s refusal to provide electric street lighting, Ruthrauff offered to step into the breach and provide the service on terms both generous to the city and magnanimous to the obstreperous gas merchants. 28
Stockly’s man in Utah had regained the initiative, for the moment. A suggestion that the revised proposal was finding support on both sides of Zion’s religious divide came on October 12, when William H. Hooper, a prominent Mormon banker and former Territorial Delegate to Congress, and 155 Gentile and Mormon businessmen petitioned the city council in favor of the revised proposal. 29 Less encouraging, however, was escalating criticism from editor Penrose and the Deseret Evening News.
On September 14, the day Ruthrauff made his first proposal, the Evening News published “The New Illuminator,” in which the writer philosophized: “[T]ime and thought and perseverance . . .will some day develop . . . the hidden forces and latent effulgence of the electric element [for] . . . the benefit and progress of the children of men . ...[but] the hour and the day have not yet come.”The article went on, offering assurance that:
The article appeared again on September 29, this time in the semi-weekly Deseret News.The Deseret News Company routinely recycled articles from its daily to its semi-weekly edition, so it may have been coincidence that “The New Illuminator” was revisited the day after Ruthrauff presented his revised proposal to the city council. 30
Two weeks later, editor Penrose stated his position with even greater force: “The agent for the Brush light,” he warned, “has made new propositions to the city council. He is also endeavoring to make contracts in other places for illuminating cities by the electric light [a reference to Ruthrauff’s activities in Ogden, Utah]. His enterprise is commendable and his propositions are plausible. But there is no reason why there should be any rush to grasp at the offers made by the representative of one method of using the new illuminator.” The editor continued, “The lighting of cities by electricity is yet an experiment. Improvements on existing methods are certain to be made. And there are several processes already for the manipulation of electric light, each claiming to be the best.” The critique closed with a Latin injunction “. . . don’t go ahead til [sic] you are certain you are right, and when you do make a change be sure to get the best to be had. Festina lente [hasten slowly] is a good motto in matters of public importance.” 31
If Ruthrauff had responded in milder vein or, better still, ignored the article altogether, his cause might have been better served. Instead, taken by surprise and reacting in haste, the Brush agent fired off an untactful rebuttal with the ill-chosen title: “A Bundle of False Assertions in the Deseret News.”This appeared in the Tribune and the Herald on October 2. A copy also went to the Evening News, which printed a terse notice,“The agent of the Brush Electric Light in this city comes out this morning in a communication, the heading of which charges the News with making a bundle of false assertions. We will have no controversy with that gentleman, but we must deny the fact that we have been guilty of making false statements.” 32
Salt Lake City's East Temple (Main) and First South Street c. 1880, where C.C. Ruthrauff proposed erecting a 200-foot arc light tower.
Penrose did not take the matter up again until “More Light—‘Hasten Slowly’” appeared in the Evening News on October 19. “There is no need to rush,” he argued. “Suspicion is naturally aroused when an effort is made to hurry any one into a contract without due consideration and careful investigation. Take time over this project. Find out for a fact how it succeeds, if at all, in other cities. Popular petitioning is all right, but the popular mind is apt to run a little ahead of discretion sometimes [reference to the Hooper petition].Wise heads will think deliberately, and wise public officials will follow the Latin proverb that we quoted in our former article, which in plain English is, hasten slowly!” 33
The journalistic sparring resumed two days later when Ruthrauff’s reply to “More Light” appeared in the Evening News. Penrose was not mollified by its more temperate tone, replying in the same edition with “A ‘Brush’ With A Machine Agent,” deriding his adversary’s “rash and reckless assertions” and his “unfair and pettifogging manner”—language usually reserved for troublesome apostates and impudent federal officials. The editor followed with “Siemens or Brush” published on October 23 and “Is The Electric Light Dangerous” a day later: The former asserting the Brush system had demonstrated no clear superiority over its competitors; the latter suggesting arc lights were inherently dangerous, threatening their users with electrocution or incineration. The more prudent course was to avoid all arc lighting systems and await the development of Thomas Edison’s low voltage incandescent lamp.
Neither the techno-babble from the Deseret Press, nor the Mormonbashing from the Tribune, encouraged Ruthrauff in his campaign—well might he have prayed for strength to overcome his foes and patience to endure his “friends.” Still, many stalwart Mormons had signed the Hooper petition. Ruthrauff, moreover, had heeded the improvement committee’s admonition to “take care” of the gas company by revising his proposal to include a dollar-for-dollar buy-out of the company’s street lighting contract while, at the same time, reducing the cost to the city. Given that his proposal already included a performance bond and a satisfaction-before-payment clause, Ruthrauff had reason to be confident it would be accepted.
Reason, that is, until October 18, when LDS church President John Taylor issued a manifesto opposing Ruthrauff’s proposal. The manifesto opened with the rhetorical question: “Why should there be such haste in trying a thing that is only an experiment,” then cited five reasons to reject the lighting proposal:
We are now being well supplied with gas as well appointed and of as good a quality as they have in other cities.
The Gas Company would be prepared to furnish an Electric Machine at as low rates as this stranger [Ruthrauff] can, if it is proven a success. If it is not a success we don’t want it.
No authentic reports have been obtained from any source of its feasability [sic] to light a city, although they have been applied for.
The City is interested in the Gas Works to the amount of $78,000—The Church to the amount of $82,000, and private citizens to the amount of $89,100 making in all a sum of $250,000.
Are we to allow this large and successful enterprise to be interrupted, injured and perhaps distroyed [sic] on the bare word of a stranger?
Taylor then fleshed out his objections, saying:
I am informed that all the power which this man [Ruthrauff] claims is that of selling the machines.The Gas Company can buy them as well as he, they are in [the] [m]arket for sale. If the electric light should prove a success . . . [t]wo hundred and fifty thousand dollars of our own citizens at the behest of a stranger, would be jeopardized or destroyed, and why should he be given a charter and a franchise to perform a labor that the Gas Company are both able and willing to do so soon as evidence can be furnished of its being a success . . .?
Are our own interests, our own Citizens and our home enterprises to be entirely ignored and are we to throw our lighting . . . into the hands of strangers and enemies, and place ourselves in the power of every adventurer.
It is not clear for whom the manifesto was intended—the Tribune suggested the bishops of the city’s ecclesiastical wards—but what is clear, however, is that the head of the LDS church opposed electric lighting in Salt Lake City if it was controlled by an outsider and threatened the local gaslight interests. 34
One week later, on October 26, the day the improvement committee was to report back to the council, the council received a second petition, this one taking issue with Hooper and his co-signers and remonstrating against the Ruthrauff proposal. It was signed by Wilford Woodruff and 715 others, 560 more than had signed Hooper’s petition.Woodruff was the new President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a council second in authority only to President Taylor and his councilors George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith. The petition represented far more than the collective opposition of its signatories; it was a formal demand that the city council enact the Taylor manifesto.
The petitioners dismissed the proffered $36,000 saving on the city’s light bill, claiming somewhat disingenuously that “no reliable information can be obtained” regarding the Brush system’s performance in other cities. They went on to observe that “there are several systems of producing electric light” and suggested “common prudence” dictated that “before the [Salt Lake City] corporation shall grant exclusive privileges to any one of these systems [viz, the Brush system], the [other systems] should be investigated so that the best may be selected.”The petitioners went on to declare:“[w]e understand the gas company has expressed its willingness to thoroughly test these various systems, and . . . to obtain an electric machine or machines of the best and most approved pattern and furnish the city with the electric light at as low rates as have been already proposed . . .” 35 35 This “understanding” was dubious at best. If superintendent Ellerbeck and his directors had any such intention, they would not have treated the Brush agent’s offer in such cavalier fashion.
After reminding the council of the troubled introduction of gas lighting to the city in 1872-73, the petitioners warned:
The relationship between city and company was spelled out in a franchise granted by the city council in 1872, and a contractual agreement made between the parties the same year. By the agreement, the gas company was required to supply the city with gas for illuminating streets and city-owned buildings within a thirty-six square block gas lighting district for a period of ten years; for its part, the city agreed to purchase gas exclusively from the gas company. If it reneged on the agreement, the city risked a breach of contract suit and the forced payment of the “several thousands of dollars” warned of by the Woodruff petitioners. What the petitioners chose not to mention was, of course, the $7,500 buy-out Ruthrauff’s revised proposal allotted to the gas company. 37
Eager as the petitioners were to avoid litigation between city and company, they were even more eager to avoid competition between gas and electric lighting. “Already,” the petitioners warned, “we hear of steps being taken to secure the patronage of stores and hotels for the electric light, and that it is in contemplation to ask for the exclusive right, in addition to lighting the city, of laying wires to supply them. Let this be done, and of what value will the gas stock of the city be, or what will be the amount of its dividends from that source?” In the minds of the petitioners, stock value and municipal revenue were not all that electric lighting threatened. “Should such an unwise policy be adopted . . . the people who use gas in their private residences would be compelled to fall back upon coal oil lamps for their lights ....and the gas company would of necessity be compelled to stop its manufacture, for the best of all reasons—it would not pay.” 38
The steps being taken, which so alarmed President Woodruff and his friends, were the inaugural efforts to organize Ruthrauff’s central station electric lighting company. Ultimately, what the petitioners feared most—as did President Taylor—was not that Ruthrauff’s electric lighting project would be an expensive failure, but that it would be a costly success. Costly, that is, for the large segment of the city’s population—most of whom were Latter-day Saints—who would benefit little from the new electric light, but would suffer much if the new lamps caused abandonment of the old. In the interest of all who felt threatened by the new lighting technology,Woodruff and his fellow petitioners echoed the Taylor manifesto, saying: “the claims of our own citizens and the builders up of our home enterprises, should not be entirely ignored, and that we should not throw our lighting . . . into the hands of strangers and those who are not identified with our city and territory.” 39 The question of new lamps versus old had been thrashed out ad nauseam in the pages of the Deseret Evening News but in this brief statement, Woodruff’s petition framed the social issue of old technology versus new with greater cogency than the News had achieved in a month of frenzied propagandizing. The advocates pro and con had spoken, the decision lay now with the city fathers.
Zions Co-operative Mercantile Institution, scene of C.C. Ruthrauffs, electric light demonstration in September 1880. Note gas street lamps on street corners and in front of the "Co-op."
The decision came quickly. On motion by Alderman Alonzo H. Raleigh, the Woodruff petition was referred to the committee on improvements for consideration along with Ruthrauff's first and second proposals and the Hooper petition. Then, in almost the same breath, the committee was called upon for its report. It was terse and to the point:
The city fathers had heard all they needed to hear and, on motion of Alderman Elijah F. Sheets, the report was accepted and its recommendations adopted. 40
For all intents and purposes, Charles Ruthrauff’s campaign to illuminate the streets of Salt Lake City had failed. The city council delayed for three years the committee’s recommendation to “obtain such information concerning its [electricity] adaptability for street lighting . . .” In 1883 the city council approved electric street lighting, but on a limited and experimental basis. 41 Phillips’ vision of an electric light tower soaring above the streets of Zion would not be realized. For the present, the old gas lamps would continue to glimmer—“yellow and foggy as if beaming through smoke”—unchallenged by the new Brush arc lamps. Meanwhile, the Deseret Evening News beamed with satisfaction that the city fathers had heeded its advice to “hasten slowly;” but editor Penrose could not claim the council had closed the door on electric lighting—even when furnished by “strangers” from Cleveland, Ohio. As for superintendent Ellerbeck and the gas company, they could hardly take comfort in the report’s conclusion that “lighting the streets with gas consumes a larger percentage of the city’s revenue than the benefits to the citizens would seem to justify” or, for that matter, regard the committee’s wish to “see introduced a better means of lighting the city and at less cost” as anything but an official warning that better things were expected of the company in the future.The committee’s words might even be read as a rebuke to the home illuminating company for not taking the lead in bringing the new electric lamps to Zion. Predictably, the Tribune lashed the city fathers for toadying to ecclesiastical prejudice against a progressive Gentile “stranger” and the best interests of the community.
As for the Gentile in question, if Charles Ruthrauff harbored any such resentment, he kept it to himself, at least until he moved on to Denver to promote a central station lighting company in the Queen City. In an interview with Denver’s Rocky Mountain News in 1881, he confided: “There is one argument that our opponents [in Denver]…have not yet adduced. It was sprung upon us in Salt Lake city [sic]… [by] the editor to the organ of the [LDS] priesthood. It was that the electric current had been known to kill people…. I think that editorial secured me the five year contract with Ogden…as it capped the climax of that foolish and ignorant question.” 42 There was still the matter of a central electrical generating station for Salt Lake City, like the one in San Francisco—and the one soon to be running in New York City. The success of his plans for Zion depended, not upon the patronage of the city council or on the Deseret Evening News good opinion, but upon the confidence of local capital and the good will of local consumers. Personal bitterness does not sweeten the market—and Ruthrauff was the Brush company’s marketer among the Mormons.
On October 27, 1880, the evening following the council session, the Brush agent sponsored yet another electric light demonstration, this time at the Horn smelter a few miles south of Salt Lake City. Attending were Salt Lake City Mayor Feramorz Little, Alderman Henry Dinwoodey, and Councilor Thomas E. Taylor. The atmosphere was cordial and Ruthrauff the perfect corporate host. Even the Deseret Evening News seemed mildly impressed. 43 Neither Gentile Stranger nor Latter-day Saint, it seems, had given or received the final word on changing Zion’s old lamps for new.
Notes
Judson Callaway and Su Richards are co-authors of “Electricity for Everything: The Progress Company and the Electrification of Rural Salt Lake County” which was published in the Summer 2002 issue of the Utah Historical Quarterly. They have contributed to several community history projects for Murray City. The authors wish to express their appreciation to the Rocky Mountain Power Co. for its cooperation in the preparation of this article.They also wish to thank Sian M. Jones for careful review of our draft and her helpful suggestions for its improvement.
1 For the visit of Cole’s circus, see Deseret Evening News, August 9 and 10, 1880, Salt Lake Daily Tribune, August 11, 1880, Salt Lake Daily Herald, August 11, 1880. See also M. B. Leavitt, Fifty Years in Theatrical Management (New York: Broadway Publishing Co., 1912), 18-139.
2 For electric lighting in Europe, including the work of Zénobe Théophile Gramme and Paul Nicholas Jablochkoff see Émile Alglave and Jean Boulard, The Electric Light: Its History, Production, and Applications, English trans.,Thomas O’Connor Sloane (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1884), bk. II-V passim; for Moses G. Farmer and William Wallace see Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin, Edison: His Life and Inventions (Cambridge, MA: Barnes & Noble Publishing, Inc., 2005), 148-498; and Robert Conot, Thomas A. Edison: A Streak of Luck (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, Inc., 1979), 123.Thomas Edison consulted William Wallace before beginning work on incandescent lighting and used a Wallace-Farmer dynamo at his Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory.
3 Charles F. Brush, “The Arc Lamp,” The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine Vol. LXX (May 1905): 110-18, and “Some Reminiscences of Early Electric Lighting,” Journal of the Franklin Institute Vol. 206 Issue 1 (July 1928): 3-15; Harold C. Passer, The Electrical Manufacturers 1875-1900: A Study in Competition, Entrepreneurship, Technical Change, and Economic Growth 1875-1900 (Harvard University Press, 1953), 4-21; and Harry J. Eisenman III, “Charles F. Brush: Pioneer Innovator in Electrical Technology” (Ph.D. diss., Case Institute of Technology, 1967), 31-76, 93-120.
4 Deseret Evening News, August 11, 1880.
5 “Editorial Notes,” Western Mining Gazetteer, August 18, 1880. The authors are indebted to Professor Brigham D. Madsen for bringing this primary source to our attention. See also Salt Lake Tribune, February 8, 1887.
6 Salt Lake Tribune, August 24, 1880.
7 Salt Lake Tribune, September 3, 1880. For Ruthrauff’s newspaper career see Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University at http://ech.cwru.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?idCSS and http://ech.cwru.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?idS1/2; and Mary Ruthrauff Hoover, History of the Ruthrauffs, 1560-1925 (Kansas City: Smith-Grieves Co., 1925), 169-76.
8 For relative luminosity of Charles F. Brush’s and Pavel Niolayevich Yablochkov’s lamps see “Electric Light.The Brush Dynamo-Electric Machine and Electric Lamps,” promotional brochure by the Telegraph Supply Company, Cleveland, Ohio, p. 4, also Charles F. Brush,“The Arc Lamp, and Some Reminiscences,” George Gorwitz, ed., A Century of Progress: The General Electric Story 1876-1978, Vol. 1, The Edison Era 1876-1892 (Schenectady, NY: General Electric Co., Inc., 1981), 14.
9 Eisenman,“Charles F. Brush,” 31-71.
10 For details of Joseph M. Neri’s work see “Experiment With Electric Light,” San Francisco Alta, April 10, 1874, reprinted in New York Times, April 19, 1874. For a general account of electric lighting in San Francisco in the 1870s see Charles M. Coleman, P. G. and E. of California:The Centennial Story of Pacific Gas and Electric Company 1852-1952 (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1952), 51-71.
11 “The Electric Light in San Francisco,” December 26, 1878, reprinted in New York Times, January 11, 1879, and Coleman, P. G. and E., 55.
12 For details of the ZCMI lighting demonstration see Salt Lake Tribune. and Salt Lake Herald, September 12, 1880, and Deseret Evening News, September 13, 1880.
13 For details of the Brush plant purchased by Marcus Daly for the Walker brothers, see Salt Lake Tribune, September 12, 1880, and January 1, 1881; Cecil H. Kirk,” A History of Montana Power, Vol. 1, 32, Montana Historical Society.
14 For electric lighting at the Germania, Old Jordan, and Morgan smelters see the Salt Lake Tribune, August 24, November 22 and December 23, 1880.
15 The year 1880 was pivotal for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Mormon community as a whole. During the summer, the Deseret News Company was organized to manage the Deseret Evening News (founded in 1850) and affiliated publications; Charles W. Penrose, formerly of the Ogden Junction, assumed the duties of editor. At about the same time, John Taylor, President of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, became the LDS church’s president, succeeding Brigham Young who had died in 1877. Taylor, in turn, was succeeded as head of the Quorum of Twelve by Apostle Wilford Woodruff. To serve as his councilors in the First Presidency, John Taylor chose George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith.
16 During the 1870s and ‘80s, the Tribune referred to the Deseret Evening News and the semi-weekly Deseret News as “Our Grandmother,” “Grandmother,” or “Granny,” and always in a context implying neither affection or respect.
17 Deseret Evening News, September 13, 1880, Salt Lake Tribune, and Salt Lake Herald, September 12, 1880.
18 Deseret Evening New, September 12, 1880.
19 Salt Lake Tribune, September 15, 1880. See also Minute No. 128, Salt Lake City Council Minute Book 1, September 14, 1880, 138, Utah State Archives, series 82755. Hereinafter as S. L. City Council Minute. See also Salt Lake Tribune and Salt Lake Herald, September 15, 1880.
20 Deseret Evening News, September 15, 1880.
21 S. L. City Council Minute No. 128, Minute Book 1, 140-41, Salt Lake Tribune, and Salt Lake Herald, September 15, 1880.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Salt Lake Tribune, September 29, 1880. The regular committee members were Alderman Henry Dinwoodey, chairman, and Council members Thomas E.Taylor and Jacob Weiler. Joseph F. Smith was associated with the committee due to the absence of Council member Weiler.
25 Salt Lake Council Minute No. 149, October 26, 1880, Minute Book I, 162-4.
26 Salt Lake Tribune, September 12, 1880, wherein Ruthrauff is cited by name:“Regarding the use of the electric light for other than the illumination of large spaces, Mr. Ruthrauff says it is a question of the remove future. Its adoption can in no way affect gas companies except for street lighting, and in this field it is simply unapproachable.” See Charles Brush,“Arc Light.”
27 Kate B. Carter, comp., “Development of Lighting Systems in Utah,” in Heart Throbs of the West (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1944) V: 458.
28 S. L. City Council Minute No. 133, September 28, 1880, Minute Book 1, 147-48; and Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake Herald, and Deseret Evening News, September 29, 1880. There is an error in the recorded version of the amended proposal. The correct five-year cost payment to Ruthrauff’s company was $17,500, not $17,000.
29 S. L. City Council Minute No. 144, October 12, 1880, Minute Book, 1, 155-56, and Salt Lake Tribune, and Salt Lake Herald, October 13, 1880.
30 Deseret Evening News, September 14, 1880, and Deseret News (semi-weekly), September 29, 1880.
31 Deseret Evening News, September 30, 1880.
32 Salt Lake Tribune, and Salt Lake Herald, October 2, 1880, Deseret Evening News, October 2, 1880.
33 Deseret Evening News, October 19, 1880.
34 “Memoranda of Prest. John Taylor in regard to the Electric Light in Salt Lake City and of the action of the City Council pertaining thereto” John Taylor family papers, MS 50, Box 2A, Fd. 35, 454-5, Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah.
35 Salt Lake City Council Minute No. 149.
36 Ibid. Whether due to an error in calculating or in typesetting, the dollar figure contained in the Woodruff petition is incorrect: $12,210 - $7,800 = $4,410, not $4,340.
37 Ibid., see also Revised Ordinances and Resolutions of the City Council of Salt Lake City, 99-104.
38 Salt Lake City Council Minute No. 149, Book I, 162-4.
39 Ibid.
40 Salt Lake City Council Minutes, Report of Committee on Improvements, Minute Book I, 166, and “City Council,” Salt Lake Herald, October 27, 1880.
41 Salt Lake City Minute No. 16, January 23, 1883, Minute Book J, 544; Committee Report, February 20, 1883, Minute Book J, 599; Minute No. 31 and Committee Report, Minute Book J, February 27, 1883.
42 Rocky Mountain News, February 10, 1881. Whether or not the Brush company’s Rocky Mountain marketer was genuinely resentful, or merely offering an excuse for failing to persuade the Salt Lake City Saints to abandon their old lamps for his new ones, is a matter of conjecture. See Rocky Mountain News, February 10,1881.
43 Deseret Evening News, October 28, 1880, also Salt Lake Tribune, and Salt Lake Herald, October 28, 1880.
