The proposed contract makes a reduction on arc
lights to $87.50 per year. It has been estimated by the
engineer of the Finance Commission that the saving for
Boston under such a contract will be $62,837 annually.
No reduction, however, is made in the proposed con-
tract in the price of incandescent lamps below the
price charged in the contract of 1909. Approximately
8,205 electric lights of various kinds illuminate the
streets of Boston at the present time, of which 4,541 are
arc lights, costing $470,175.14 yearly, and 3,664 low
power incandescent lamps, costing $73,918.99, a total
of $544,094.13 yearly.
None of the contracts for electric Ughting provided
any means for arbitration of the price during the term
of the contract, until the ten-year contract of 1898 was
made. Acting under the arbitration clause in that
contract the Mayor of Boston in 1907 attempted to
secure a reduction in the price. The result reached by
the arbitrators was that the city was not only not
entitled to a reduction in price, but that the city should
actually have been charged more than was paid under
the terms of the contract. As this latter conclusion was
obviously wrong, the method of computing the com-
pany's investment was changed by mutual consent of
the arbitrators under clause three of the contract. The
result then showed that the city was entitled to a reduc-
tion. When negotiations for the 1909 contract were
being made it was determined that the arbitration
clause of the 1898 contract was too involved in its
phraseology and, in order to remedy this defect, the
clause was revised to make it practical and workable.
