Burglarions Practices of Predatory Wealth Not Essential to National Prosperity. If the activity of the police had made burglary more hazardous than usual, and, as a result, the price of burglars' tools had fallen in the world's markets, no burglar would have the effrontery to suggest to the rest of the population that such decline threatened the common prosperity, and no one would be simple enough to believe him if he did. In this respect, Lord Rothschild and his kind differ from burglars, as those timid ones who see disaster in a falling stock-market differ from those who would refuse to view with apprehension a marked cut in the price of "jimmies" and dark lanterns. The noble lord has observed that in England and France the activity of the Socialists has decreased the market value of the securities of public-service corporations, and that in the United States, the policies of President Roosevelt are interfering with the plans of those who want to unload railroad and other stocks at high-water mark. He believes we are "killing the goose that lays the golden eggs," and, being a great and good friend of the common people of all countries, of course he feels very badly about it. Yet, what are the facts? In what respect does the decreased price of stocks, due to the attacks of Socialists and others upon publicservice corporations, differ from any decrease in price that burglars' tools might sustain if the police, by their activity, were to threaten the profits of the burglary business? The function of burglars' tools is to enable those who own them to obtain the property of others without rendering an equivalent. Are stocks and bonds valuable for any other reason? Would either be worth a dollar if they could not be used to pry wealth out of the pockets of those who produce it? Who would care to own stocks and bonds if dividends were not paid on the stocks and interest on the bonds? He could not sell them, because they would be as useless to everyone else as they would be to him. The thing that now makes stocks and bonds valuable is their power to enable their owners to obtain without labor wealth that others have produced by labor. And, of course, any legislation that threatens to decrease the exploiting power of these bits of paper necessarily decreases their value, and therefore their market price, just as unusual police activity against burglars might be expected to decrease the market price of burglars' tools by threatening the profits from burglary. But, in the latter case, the burglars would be the only ones who would have occasion to be alarmed, and there is no doubt that the Socialists of England and France are giving Lord Rothschild valid reasons for alarm. So far as the present writer can discover, however, there is no reason why those who are willing to work for what they get should worry because it promises to become increasingly difficult to get that for which someone else has worked. ALLAN L. BENSON. ONE PUBLIC-OWNERSHIP NEWS. BY RALPH ALBERTSON, Secretary for the National Public-Ownership League. Tainted Municipal-Ownership News. NE OF the most important articles that has appeared in the current press is that in Collier's for May 4th, which describes the subsidized campaign against municipalownership. "There have been and still are,' says this article, "newspapers which sell their news columns and often their editorial columns for a dollar a line, more or less." There are well-known agencies through which millions of dollars are spent upon these newspapers and the so-called news with which they are furnished. In Boston this agency is known as the Publicity Bureau, in New York as the Press Service Company, and in Washington as the National News Service. Their business is to manufacture news favorable to the public-service corporations who put up the funds. "They hire themselves out to change public sentiment, most often it is to quiet the clamorous indignation which some corporation has brought upon itself by wrongdoing; occasionally it is to sow the seeds of corporation propaganda, to fertilize the public mind for the friendly reception of some longplanned move in corporation aggrandizement." "Keeping the public persuaded that municipal-ownership would be very bad may soon. be a regular item in the operating expenses of the public-service corporations. You pay to the street-car company your nickel and in due time the proper fraction comes back to you in the evening paper in the shape of tainted news items reciting the deplorable failure of municipal-ownership in some foreign city." Collier's tells just how this is done how the "Municipal-Ownership Publishing Bureau" works tricks on the newspapers themselves furnishing them Washington letters on all sorts of subjects for the sake of getting a fling at public-ownership. Not only are these Washington letters of news gossip sent around free but the regular sources of news service are corrupt so far as possible and a complete card catalogue on the psychology of editors as well as the financial condition of the papers is kept up-to-date for the purpose of this pernicious propaganda. The results of this bureau's work can be seen most clearly in the highly respectable and conservative papers who would rather than not believe all the hard stories against civic enterprises that are so industriously circulated, but we must believe that there are but few papers in the country who would wilfully publish falsehoods known as such. It is their knowledge of this that has made it necessary for the organizers of this newspaper campaign to go to great pains and expense in concealing the identity of their backing and the motives actuating them in their work. lighting and the surplus will either be sold or utilized in some other municipal activity. It is believed that this will prove an object lesson of the greatest value to other cities that are now spending large sums both for the disposal of garbage and for the production of power. Wallingford, Connecticut. WALLINGFORD has owned and operated its own lighting plant since 1900, and municipal operation has produced a radical reduction in the cost of electricity and a consequent relative reduction in the price which the private gas company can demand for its product. The citizens say that the municipal electric plant is to be thanked largely for the reduction in the price of gas from $5 to $1.50 a thousand feet. According to the Connecticul law the city is required to raise by taxation and pay to the electrical department the actual cost of maintaining the street-lighting system. The system of accounts therefore is very satisfactory. The last annual report shows a total profit of $37,224. After figuring off 5 per cent. each year for depreciation and 5 per cent. for profit there is still a gross surplus of $2,212. All additions, extensions, and improvements, including the purchase of a large water privilege have been paid from the earnings of the plant. The business has more than doubled. The demand liabilities are $56,445 and the physical assets $96,026. The control of the plant is vested in three commissioners, one appointed each year to serve three years. These employ a superintendent. No politics has entered into the management. Mr. A. L. Pierce, superintendent of the plant, says that it is common to hear people express their preference to trade with the patrons of the municipal plant rather than with the private gas company, saying that they want to spend their money with those who trade with them. "All thinking citizens consider themselves as owners of the plant and take a deep interest in its operation, knowing that every dollar that is paid for electric lighting above the actual cost of operation goes directly for the benefit of the plant in which they as tax-payers are stockholders and which their property is pledged to support; and which prohibits any company or combination that might, if it had the people at its mercy, be tempted to charge exorbitnat rates for so vital necessity, which sometimes happens in less favored places." Toronto's Street Railways. THE STREET-RAILWAYS of Toronto are owned by the city and operated by a private company. The company pays to the city yearly $800 per mile of single track, $1,600 per mile of double track, and also of its gross receipts eight per cent. of the first million dollars, ten per cent. of the second million, and twenty per cent. on all gross receipts above three million dollars. These payments amounted to over $1,000 per day during the year 1905, and the total was something like $435,000 in 1906. As the gross receipts are nearing the $3,000,000 mark the city will soon be receiving in addition to the mileage one-fifth of every fare collected. Since the lease has still 15 years to run the mayor of Toronto estimates that the city will before its expiration be receiving double this amount and he adds that a shrewd and observant financier has said to him that at the expiration of the charter the company to whom the new charter is given ought to pay a bonus for a new charter sufficient to pay off the debt of Toronto which is between $15,000,000 and $20,000,000, and then to continue on the same basis as the present company with respect to mileage and percentage. The mayor speaks very favorably of this arrangement but yet he says it has not been altogether easy to make the corporation fulfil its part of the contract. There have been 84 law suits during the past 15 years, but the delays of the law will not be so bad in the future as the legislature of Ontario has finally constituted a board of commissioners to settle disputes between railways and municipalities. The public pays 5 cents cash fare, six tickets for a quarter, twenty-five tickets for a dollar, children's tickets, ten for a quarter, workingmen's tickets, eight for a quarter, all with unlimited transfers. Notwithstanding all these advantages and this large income received by the city the operating company has made money. They were capitalized at the start for $6,000,000, have increased their stock to $8,000,000, and are paying 6 per cent. Detroit, Michigan. THE MUNICIPAL lighting plant of Detroit furnishes light only for the streets, parks and public buildings. This municipal plant produces electricity at a gross cost of 34 cents per kilowatt hour. The city of Boston pays a private company ten cents per kilowatt hour for lighting public buildings-just three times self. The cost for a two thousand candleas much as it costs Detroit to do this for herpower arc light is $59.44 a year. These figures include interest, depreciation and lost taxes. the depreciation being figured upon real estate and conduits upon which there is no depreciation and no allowance being made for improved service and many other advantages which have accrued. In comparing this plant for the past ten years with Buffalo's private contract for the same services during the same period, Hon. F. F. Ingram says that Buffalo's arcs have cost $91.77 against an average cost in Detroit of $87.63, and while this difference may be figured off, there is a still greater difference in Detroit's favor. Buffalo has nothing to show for this ten years' expenditure but receipted bills. Detroit has that and besides that, an up-to-date perfectly equipped public lighting plant that cannot be duplicated for $1,000,000. So while Detroit's public lights the past ten years have cost the city, including the total cost of the lighting plant, less than Buffalo's lights have cost her, Detroit has made a $1,000,000 plant besides. Public Baths in Boston. THE CITY of Boston owns and operates eight public baths, six of which are connected with gymnasiums. The total number of baths taken last year was 703,524, an average of 58,627 per month, the number being about equally distributed between the winter and summer months. It would appear from the approximate uniformity of these figures that to a large extent the privileges were availed of by a fixed number of citizens who used these baths for purposes of cleanliness, and it is to be supposed resulting better health. Eminent Domain in Salem, Ohio. A PUBLIC-SERVICE corporation seeking to force the people to pay out a higher rate by shutting off its water supply and announcing publicly that the "water will stay shut off until you talk business," found its match in the mayor of Salem, Ohio. The water supply in this city is owned by a Boston corporation. The company demanded increased rates or an exorbitant price for its plant and shut off the supply. The people refused to pay the price and Mayor Carlyle forcibly took pos session of the plant, lighted the fires with his own hands, and started the engines. The mayor evidently knows how to deal with corporation anarchy. San Francisco Street Cars. ONE OF the results of the great strike in San Francisco was the publication in the daily press of despatches declaring that the city would undertake the municipal-ownership and management of the Geary street-railway which had been abandoned by the company. The announcement says that the board of supervisors will at once appropriate $400,000 in addition to the $350,000 already appropriated for the assumption of the railroad. A Municipal Bank. IN HIS last annual message Mayor Weaver of Philadelphia recommended the organization of a municipal banking house. He pointed out that while the city gets only two per cent., the banks in which $20,000,000 of the city's money is deposited each year get six per cent. "If we could absolutely eliminate politics from such an institution, it occurs to me that a city banking institution would be a splendid thing. In such an institution the money of the municipality could be deposited and a general banking business carried on. We would never find ourselves in the position we are in to-day in having difficulty in placing our 3 per cent. loans. While we are asking money at 34 per cent. and only getting 2 for it, it is being used and very properly used, by the banking institutions who are getting 6 per cent. for it, and probably in some institutions it is being sent to New York and loaned there at a higher rate." Attica, Indiana. THIS city has an electric lighting plant to which $8,000 in improvements are being added, making it up-to-date in every respect. The citizens take pride in this enterprise and there is no chance for private capital to get it away from them. The Attica Press for April 27th, says: "The Attica light and water plant has always paid under municipal ownership because it has been kept free from political entanglements and has been managed solety on a business basis. At present it is paying employés, fuel, and all other expenses, taking care of the bonds and is giving to the people their street lighting and fire service without cost. Some of these times the city will be in shape to add a heating plant, for she can put it in and manage it cheaper than a private who thinks municipal ownership-does n't pay corporation and give lower rates. The man ought to come to Attica and investigate. The results here will convert any of them." English and American Cities. THE CLAIM made by Mr. Bryce that munici pal government in the United States is a most conspicuous failure is refuted by William S. Crandall in the April Bulletin of the League of American Municipalities, and successive numbers. Among other things Mr. Crandall draws a comparison between a group of twenty-five American cities having between one hundred thousand and three hundred thousand inhabitants and twenty-five English cities of approximately the same population. Some of the facts brought out in this comparison are of interest and compel deductions in support of public-ownership not made by the writer. The twenty-five American cities have a total aggregate debt of $232,000,000. The total aggregate debt of the principal saleable possessions of these cities, exclusive of sinking funds, is $290,000,000, of which the value of such public utilities as water, electric light, gas works, markets, scales, docks, wharves, cemeteries, crematories, bath-houses, and bathing beaches, is $109,000,000. Of the twenty-five English cities the total aggregate debt is £46,000,000, which is $8,000,000 less than the debt of the twenty-five American cities. The total aggregate value of their water-works, gas, and electric plants, tramways, markets, harbors, piers, baths and burial grounds, is estimated at £40,000,000, while the total corprate property is valued at £67,000,000. While the total debt of the English cities is less than that of the American, their assets exceed those of the American cities by $35,000,000. The debt of the American cities is 80 per cent. of their assets, while the debt of the English cities is but 68 per cent. of their assets. An analysis of these assets reveals the fact that the income-producing property of the English cities is much greater than that of the American. About 60 per cent. of the assets of the English cities consists of their public utilities, while less than 37 per cent. of the American assets can be so classified, some of these being non-revenue-producing. The Chicago Municipal Repair Plant. THE CITY of Chicago operates its own repair plant on municipal-ownership lines. During the past year it did 722 jobs ranging in cost from 50 cents to $10,000 each, the total value being $400,000, and the saving affected over the amounts that would have been paid contractors was at least $75,000. It is claimed that this department could build the new city hall at a saving of from 20 to 30 per cent. of the price that will have to be paid contractors for building it. The department has been greatly improved during a number of years, having been changed from a badly disciplined money-losing department to one of the most complete business institutions in the city. It was the success of this department that encouraged the finance committee of the city council to appropriate funds for a municipal foundry which it is estimated will save thousands of dollars a year to the city. William D. Barber, a civil engineer, who is at the head of the department, says that through the civil-service system the system has the pick of the cream of labor. The end aimed at is to have the department build all the city buildings, with the safeguards thrown about the work that have characterized the running of the department since the municipal-ownership idea has been followed. Municipal Gas Plants. THERE are twenty-nine municipal gas plants in the United States and in addition to these one owned by the United States government and two others in which the municipali ties own a share of the stock. The oldest of these city gas plants is that of Richmond, Virginia, which was established in 1852. It is pointed to by the opponents of municipalownership as a conspicuous failure, but there can be no doubt whatever that the people of Richmond are better served and at a lower rate, than they would be under private ownership. Other old plants are those of Alexandria, Virginia, established in 1853, Henderson, Kentucky, in 1867, and Bellfontaine, Ohio, in 1873. All of these thirty-two plants, with the exception of Philadelphia's are operated by the government and are giving good service at relatively low prices. Cleveland's Street Lighting. In A STATEMENT issued by the Cleveland Board of Public-Service shows some results of the municipal operation of the city's streetlighting department. Under private contract from 1900 to 1903 the cost per lamp was from $25 to $28. When the city took charge in 1904 the cost dropped to $21 a lamp. In 1905 it was $18.39, and in 1906 it was $18.35. 1903 under private contract there were 9,631 lamps in service costing $271,648. In 1906 there were 13,030 lamps in service at a total cost of $269,819 being a reduction of $9.85 a lamp. This excellent showing for municipal operation it must be remembered covers a period of increasing prices. Willimantic Municipal Ice. THE CONNECTICUT state legislature has passed a bill amending the charter of Willimantic, according to a request of the city council, enabling the city to engage in the ice business. This amendment will be submitted Monday of September and if approved by a to a referendum vote of the people on the first majority vote the act will take effect on the second Monday of September. It is predicted that the people will vote by a large majority for the establishment of this municipal ice plant. Portland, Oregon. THIS city has a unique association of citizens having for its object the making of water free to all; that is, without the payment of what are known as water rates. It is known as the "Free Water Association." It has secured 1,400 signatures to a petition to secure a charter amendment. If the desired amend ment to the city charter is passed by the people free water will be provided for drinking, cooking, washing, bathing, and toilet, in all houses, stores, work-shops, and offices in the city. Water for sprinkling, commercial and other purposes not covered in the free water clause, will be charged for. Revenue to defray the expenses of the department will be raised by taxation. Tecumseh, Nebraska. BY A VOTE of 277 to 75 this small city has decided to own and operate an electric-lighting plant and has appropriated $12,750 for the purpose. |