Men and money were found to carry on the work and under wise management as a merger company and with expenditure during the last two years of about half a million dollars on the enlargement and improvement of their plants, the water, gas and electric services of the city have been raised to a standard of excellence that is justly a cause for civic pride. In due time also has come the Interurban line, with its great power house in this city, giving us closer connections north and south, the new fireproof Hilton hotel, second to none in southern "Wisconsin, and last of all our Beloit street railway, opened in July, 1907, and already considered by the public and by its owners a most gratifying success. The doubling of Beloit 's population, also, within the last ten years reveals a manifest reason for our new watchword of "Greater Beloit," applied not only to the college but equally to the city, a busy, bustling, thriving city now of about sixteen thousand souls; a city of homes and good order ; a city the products of whose mills and factories supply not only domestic wants but also the demands of a widely extended and extending foreign trade ; a city in whose business houses and magni