Not Too Popular

Mr. Cantor must be one of the least popular men in Detroit today, judging from the comments of the men and women who waited patiently in line to turn in their bulbs for the last time.

“I've been getting my bulbs here all my life, and my mother got hers this way, too,” Pat Lloyd, an office worker, said as the line inched forward and her lunch hour slipped by. “Somebody ought to get that man who did this.” But she didn't sound as though she really meant it.

Mr. Cantor has told local newspapers that he sometimes wonders if the suit was worth it. He will gain no damage awards from it, but his lawyers are seeking $1.5 million in fees from the utility, and will get at least $690,000. Mr. Cantor could not be reached for comment today.

The bulb program allowed the owners of new houses to get their first bulbs from the utility, so John and Rose Wybraniec showed up at the utility's Dearborn office with the blueprints of their daughter's not quite finished new home, the location of light fixtures clearly marked on it.

Couldn't Show a Bill

But they could not produce a bill showing that the electricity had been hooked up, and were turned away.

Detroit Edison got into the free light bulb business late in the last century when electricity was a new‐fangled idea competing with kerosene and gas for customers. So Detroit Edison's predecessor, like many other utilities around the country, began handing out free bulbs as an inducement to take their service, and the practice continued.

The municipally owned power systems in Lansing and Wyandotte still exchange bulbs with their customers and say they will continue to do so. The bulb program was not entirely free, of course. The utility says its subscribers pay $2 a year as part of their monthly bill, for the unlimited exchange service, about the price of three bulbs at a drugstore.