架空电线的危险。

架空电线的危险。

SEVERAL fatal acccidents—if accidents they can be called— that have occurred lately have added force to previous demonstrations, that overhead electric light wires are a constant menace to the lives of citizens. In this city two persons were killed instantly by coming in contact with the ends of electric light wires that had been severed; one person was killed in Canada from a similar cause, and other fatal accidents have occurred this year in consequence of the person coming in contact with these wires. In one or two instances the wires were not those of the electric light companies, but were other wires, carried on the same poles, that had become charged with the powerful electric current of the electric light wires. The companies interested have sought to make a point in their favor by claiming that the wires left dangling, that wrought these sudden deaths, were not electric light wires, but we presume it made little difference to the unfortunate victims whether they were killed by a strong current of electricity taken directly from the electric light wires, or whether some unoffending telegraph or telephone wire was made the medium of communicating the current to them. The fact remains that the electric light current is powerful enough to instantly kill the unsuspecting person who may accidentally come in contact with it, no matter by what means it may be transmitted to his person. Thje remedy, and the only practical one for removing this danger from our midst, is the placing of all electrical wires, of whatever nature, underground So long ago as 1885, Ralph V. Pope, an experienced electrician of this city, in a paper read before the National Electric Light Association used the following language :

There is no more important question before the electrical community of this city to-day than the underground line problem. Every branch of business requiring the use of pole lines must shortly be brought face to face with its actual solution. While there may be a difference of opinion as to the authority of the State to compel the abandonment and practical destruction of the overhead plants which actually exist, and which have been constructed in accordance with the requirements of the proper authority, there cm be little doubt that the building of new aerial street lines in the future may, and probably will, be absolutely prohibited in the ci:ies of New York and Brooklyn.