they will do us the very great favor of securing copies of the report and the criticisms already made, and will send to Mr. Woodruff their comments, suggestions and criticisms. Let us try to make this Program, when we submit it for action at the next meeting of the League, as great a Program as the united intelligence of the constituent members of this League can make

it.

Don't leave it to a few men to do all the work, and leave to yourself the delightful task of simply finding fault.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Charles Richardson will present a paper on "Municipal Franchises."

Mr. Richardson then read a paper on "Municipal Franchises." (See pages 94 to 100.)

THE CHAIRMAN: The discussion of Mr. Richardson's paper will be opened by the Hon. Samuel M. Jones, Mayor of Toledo, Ohio.

Mr. Jones then presented the following paper:

PAPER OF HON. SAMUEL M. JONES.

Candor compels me to say that the paper we have just listened to deals with the subject of municipal franchises from what is ordinarily regarded as a broad and liberal standpoint. The arguments, pro and COD, have been fairly stated and I discover no attempt to do anything other than to give fair consideration to the subject. With all due respect for the opinions that have been presented, I feel constrained to announce myself as being unalterably opposed to any grant of municipal franchise for any purpose whatever and I take this position as a matter of principle. I maintain that the idea of granting franchises to private individuals or corporations to minister to a city in social necessities is as wrong in scientific theory as it is mischievous and destructive of what is best in municipal life in practice. The whole idea of granting special privileges to a few people to make profit from all the rest of the people is undemocratic, and consequently is opposed to, and stands in the way of progress towards the realization of our loftiest and best ideals, the equality of all men before the law. As Sidney Webb says in his book on "Socialism in England:" "The individualist city alderman will walk along the municipal pavement, lit by municipal gas, and cleaned by municipal brooms. with municipal water, and seeing by the municipal clock on the municipal city hall that he is too early to meet his children coming from the municipal school and municipal gymnasium near by the municipal asylum and municipal hospital, will use the national telephone system to tell them not to walk through the municipal park to hear the municipal

band, but to come by the municipal street car around by the municipal lodging house, to meet him in the municipal reading room, close by the municipal art gallery, where he intends to consult some of the national handbooks in order to prepare bis next speech in favor of national ownership of railways and canals."

"Self-help, sir, individual self-help, that's what has made our city what it is."

And so, as Mrs. Stetson says:

"We shut our eyes and call it night;

We grope and fall in seas of light."

I am unable to see why it is not just as reasonable to undertake to make a plan for providing individuals or corporations franchises to build and take care of the city streets and bridges, letting them collect their pay by the old-fashioned method of the tollgate, as to grant franchises to people to furnish us with light. I believe that plenty of individuals and corporations can be found who will agree to furnish this or any other social service cheaper than the city can do it through municipal ownership. They will agree to police our cities, they will agree to take care of our fires, they will agree to carry on our schools, to take care of our poor as they used to do in days gone by, and proclaim that they can save money for the taxpayer; and to my mind it is just as reasonable in these closing years of the nineteenth century for thoughtful men to set about devising a system of checks and balances that will compel corporations to do as they agree in the management of any one of these privileges as it is in the management of a street railway, an electric lighting plant, a water plant, or any other public interest of the city. There is no difference. The streets, the schools, the bridges, the fire department, the police department are pretty generally emancipated from the grasp of the money-getter. They have passed beyond his reach; they are now in the domain of municipally-owned and conducted things, where eventually we shall find all such things as waterworks, lighting plants, heating plants, telephones, telegraphs, messenger service, city directory, and, in fact, every form of public utility which can be operated by the people for the benefit of all of the people better than an individual or private corporation can serve them.

Private ownership of public franchises is a high crime against democracy. It is contrary to the spirit of republican institutions. It is a city granting a privilege to an individual to enrich hmself, usually at the expense of the classes least able to bear it, the poor people. The bard-earned nickel of the washerwoman and the toiler go to make up the profits of the street railway magnates. Let all those who share this sort of profit understand the source of their wealth. I want the ladies who wear sealskins and diamonds and the men who make gifts of this kind of money to universities, hospitals, missionary societies and churches, to be made aware of the source of their revenue.

In granting, in giving, or in selling a franchise of that kind, the city becomes a party to the crime, and to this crime against the common people of this country we can trace much of the misery, wretchedness and social distress of the present hour.

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen:-I am positive that our municipal program should speak in no uncertain tone on this subject. There is no ground for compromise. The principle of private ownership of public utilities is wrong, and no amount of patching, legislative or otherwise, can make it right. The fundamental idea of democracy is not that an individual shall be free to seek his own good or to pursue his own ends. The merit of the idea of democracy lies in the assumption that every man will sink his own interest in order to serve his fellowmen, and this is by the law of our very being, our only possible chance for permanent peace and happiness. And yet so very dimly is this principle understood to-day that it is the commonest kind of an occurrence to hear a man say that he "cannot afford to take public office," that he is "too busy with his own affairs." This assumption is a denial of democracy, and until, through a more perfect system of education, we shall come to understand that the city, State and nation has the first claim upon our affection and service, in peace as well as in war, and that for a man to say that he cannot afford to take public office is the rankest kind of treason to the State, we shall not begin to realize the glory of the possibilities that yet await our collective effort.

The Supreme Court of the State of Indiana has given us a most valuable and helpful lesson on this point. In the decision of Judge James McCabe, on the 10th of March, 1898, in the case of the State of Indiana against the Ohio Oil Company.

The State of Indiana sought to enforce the law prohibiting the waste of natural gas. The defendant company and certain individuals throughout the Indiana oil field found that they could not produce oil from certain parts of their lands without wasting natural gas in the process. They contested the law, urging that superlative right that individualism always puts forward, "the right of every man to conduct his own business in his own way," but the Court gave us a thoroughly democratic as well as a most Christian decision to the effect that no man or set of men had a right to carry on a business that was a menace to the interests of the people. It was in vain that the defendants plead that "their business would suffer." The Court pointed out very clearly that to permit them to enrich themselves would be to inflict an irreparable injury upon the people of the State, and in this decision the Court speaks of natural gas as "the people's property" and "the property of the State."

This assault upon the rights of the people was not due to the fact that the Ohio Oil Company is a large corporation. Even the Standard Oil Company itself is only an enlarged edition of our "popular idol," the successful business man. Individual oil operators of my personal

acquaintance were just as anxious to defeat the law, in order that they might make profit, as was the Ohio Oil Company. The attempt to defeat the law was due to the fact that business has come to be looked upon as superior to any other right, and in our devotion to business we have lost sight of the rights and interests of the people.

men.

The social distress in our cities, our States and nation to-day can he clearly traced to our dishonest business methods. It is not corrupt politicians that have brought disaster so much as corrupt business The methods of business have gotten into our politics, and business, through every conceivable form of bribery and appeal to the vilest and lowest passions of human life-the passion of selfishness particularly-has made us worshippers of the god of success, with the result that we have a country in which a few people are wealthy, a few are in what may be called circumstances of reasonable comfort, the masses are on the verge of poverty, and millions are in absolute pauperism. It is said that two and a half million in the State of New York were the recipients of the nine millions of charity distributed in that State last year. According to Spahr's tables of the distribution of wealth in the United States, one-half of the people of our country own absolutely nothing, one-eighth of the population own seven-eighths of the wealth, and one per cent. of the people own 55 per cent. of the wealth. In a country that is rich beyond the dreams of avarice, we are confronted by this appalling condition. Our wealth is in the

hands of a few people, and this result is the consequence of an endeavor to carry on the public work of the city, State and nation for the benefit of a few persons instead of for the benefit of all the people.

Nothing that I have yet heard here or elsewhere has brought me to see that the policy of granting or selling public franchises is anything other than an assault upon the very foundations of democratic government itself, and, as a matter of fact, it is only when we are sunken so low in public morality as to be unworthy to be called citizens that we are willing to make profit at the expense of our fellow-men. I have already pointed to the fact that the profits of the street railway magnates the silks and satins and lace curtains and lambrequins and the multiplicity of sofa pillows of their wives and daughters, are purchased with the hard-earned nickels of the toiling washerwoman, and certainly my intelligent conception of right social relations would lead every one of these to spurn the thought of living in luxury purchased at such a price. But our attention has not been called to these things; our attention has been called to the "successful man." Press and pulpit, public school and college, throughout the land have sounded the praise of the individual whose only claim to distinction lies in the fact that he has placed the city, State or nation under tribute to himself, and this man, who has been changed from a being created in the image of God into a monster of greed and rapacity, is just what we have made him by the processes I have just described.

The trust, the combine, the monopoly, are all legitimate products

of the same wrong system, and the futile and abortive effort of our public officials to get results from laws made to regulate, restrain and control trusts, is a striking illustration of the folly of our method of procedure. We have built up a social system in which we have assumed that it was possible all might succeed, when the very success of a few is dependent upon, and can only come from, the failure of the many; and it is because I see that a suicidal policy of this kind can lead to nothing but "confusion worse confounded" that I protest against it.

I am not indulging in a phillipic against rich men, against trusts, combines, or monopolies. They are serving a useful purpose; they are teaching society the value of the economy of production. I point to all of these as legitimate products of a thing that we call present-day civilization. The folly of legislating against them may be easily understood when we reflect that, almost without exception, our antagonisms against trusts, combines or monopolies lie in the thought that we ourselves are not in it; once let us became sharers or partakers in the public plunder and our opposition vanishes. The reason for this is found in the fact that our opposition does not rest upon a pure basis of morality; but we are rapidly coming to see that the chances for the many to become partakers in this sort of wealth are so very limited that great masses are made moral perforce-moral because of the absolute inability to be immoral, or to become partakers of the fruits of other people's toil.

It is remarkable how rapidly the public mind is clarifying upon this question. Through close personal contact with biting poverty, the great masses of the disinherited are coming to see that, notwithstanding our oft-repeated boasts about the "wealth of the nation," the only wealth they have any share in is the Commonwealth. Though they tramp thousands of miles daily through the streets of our cities, either because they have not or cannot afford to spend the precious nickel to ride, they are still able to understand that the public streets are theirs, are common property; they may walk in them in their weary and hopeless march for the right that is inherent in every man, but which we are to-day denying to millions-that is, the right to work, the right to share in the creative effort going on about them, the right to participate in building and making a country that they are asked and expected to, and want to, love. These millions are coming to understand the source of their misery, the cause of their distress. They are coming to see that our policy of granting special privileges in the way of public franchises, contracts, and unusual opportunities for profit getting to a few, is inevitably making paupers of the many, and our only salvation from the strain of the present hour is to cease our policy of exploiting all of the people for the sake of enriching the few, and to establish in its stead the purely democratic policy in government of considering the interest of all the people as always ahead of, and superior to, the rights of any individual or set of individuals.