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By Root 922 0

Edison Company plant at Thirty-eighth Street and First Avenue, which replaced four hundred small electric power plants in Manhattan, took up two city blocks and furnished almost 90 percent of the electricity for Manhattan and the Bronx. It ran 152 boilers, which consumed more than half a million tons of coal in the course of one year. The grime and soot the plant produced was a constant source of irritation to neighboring homes and businesses, not only noxious to breathe but also damaging to furniture and draperies. The company, repeatedly fined by the health department for coal smoke violations and cinder nuisances, had watchers of its own. The New York Times reported that during an ongoing investigation, "when it was found Health Department men were trying to photograph the smoke stacks, 'scouts' were put on the company's roof who ordered the feeding of coal stopped whenever photographers appeared."

Whatever the fuel source, electric companies have always sought to cultivate a consistent demand for power, since a plant is most efficient and profitable when its output is constant. In the early twentieth century, they courted industrial and commercial customers, who not only used large amounts of electricity at predictable times but also were usually located in concentrated areas, which meant there'd be minimal investment in lines. They particularly sought customers whose demands might complement the municipal drain on electricity from trolleys and street lighting, both of which used a good deal of power early in the morning and later in the day.

Electric companies—still called "light companies" in the early decades of the twentieth century—were private corporations, and since access to electricity was not yet considered the right of every citizen, they felt no obligation to deliver power to individual homes. Electric light in homes, they believed, would exacerbate strains on their systems, since people would turn on their lamps during the peak-demand hours of dusk. It hadn't yet occurred to them to promote the sale of washers, dryers, vacuum cleaners, and irons, which would have increased daytime electric use in homes. At least in the early years of the century, they had little faith that householders would be interested in such things. So by 1912, more than three decades after Edison's Menlo Park demonstrations, only 16 percent of American homes were connected to central station power, and most of those were in wealthy and upper-middle-class districts.

Even in homes wired for electricity, those who wanted to use electric appliances faced a host of obstacles. Household wiring was unregulated and rudimentary, sufficient for little more than lighting alone. The styles and types of plugs varied from manufacturer to manufacturer, and people could plug in smaller appliances only if they had the correct outlets for them. If a family purchased a stove, which required insulated wires, or a refrigerator, which ran on higher-than-normal wattage, they usually had to upgrade the wiring in their home. As late as 1926, one commentator observed: "Electrical articles are the only ones which cannot be taken home and put to use by the purchaser, when, where, and as he pleases!"

The quality and design of many early appliances was poor as well. One man, recalling his mother's first iron, noted: "It was a Dover iron. And even though it had a plain, unplated iron soleplate and a nickel-plated shell, we thought it looked pretty swell.... The new iron did a wonderful job. But the attached cord, which ran directly inside the shell to the terminals, kept burning off because of the heat at that point." There were no safety standards and few guarantees. When appliances broke down, as they often did, there was no system of service for repair. What was a householder left with? Often no more than a "so-called instruction booklet which never in eight years has helped us in a single emergency.... Does the motor stop, the engine refuse to start, is there a mysterious 'spark,' 'smoke,' unexplained 'knock'—we can pore through the booklet in vain for help."