Seattle's Rival Gas and Electric Firms Merge Under One Roof
The Union Electric Company and the Seattle Gas and Electric Light Company lease their plants to a new Union Illuminating Company, promising customers that 'consumers will be unaffected.'
It is now definitely understood that the rumored consolidation of the Union Electric Company and the Seattle Gas and Electric Light Company has been effected. The plants and properties of these two companies have been leased for a long period of years to the Union Illuminating Company, a corporation formed for that purpose. This consolidation is in line with the general tendency of competing companies, who have been forced by the experience of the last two years to introduce economies in their operations, and it is understood that the consolidation will effect a large saving in the operating expense of the companies.
The electric light plant of the two companies will be assembled at one station, the gas plant, of course, maintaining its present position. No change is contemplated in the price of either gas or electricity, so that as far as the public and the consumers are concerned they will be unaffected by the consolidation, which has been made from purely business motives and in the interest of economical operation. The officers of the new company have not yet been announced, but it is understood that the board will be made up of representatives from both companies. No changes are contemplated in the heads of the different departments, but the gas company will move its office to the one occupied by the Union Electric Company on Second street.
“No change is contemplated in the price of either gas or electricity, so that as far as the public and the consumers are concerned they will be unaffected by the consolidation.”
When private gas and electric rivals merged into a single leased plant in 1895, Seattleites got the friendly assurance that 'consumers will be unaffected.' Within a decade the city would build its own publicly owned utility — Seattle City Light — partly in reaction to the prices and politics of private power. Consolidation, promised savings, and a city deciding it would rather own the grid itself is a cycle that still shapes Seattle households' bills.
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