CHAPTER XXII. THE SURFACE STREET RAILWAY AS A FACTOR IN MODERN LIFE. 277. Public nature of the street railway 282. Street railways as a factor in the business. financial world. 278 Street railways in relation to the 283. Development of street railway modistribution of population. tive power and equipment. traffic. 279. The interest of abutting property- 284. The development of street railway owners in street railway construction and operation. 280. Relation of street railways to other users of the street. 281. Relations of the street railway to the men who run it. 285. Development of the capitalization 286. franchises. In 277. Public nature of the street railway business.-The whole street railway problem turns upon the point as to whether the business is public or private in its nature. this country it has generally been treated as a private business somewhat "affected with a public interest." If it is a private business, then the ever-controlling motive in it is the making of profits. If it is a public business, there are other controlling purposes which may in case of conflict over-ride the motive financial gain. In the early history of railroads, the new enterprise was endowed with a share of sovereignty which enabled the railroad corporation to acquire a right of way by taking private property in condemnation proceedings. By this fact alone the railroad was characterized as a public improvement. Indeed, the public character of the railroad was so fully recognized that both the federal and the state governments, as well as many municipal subdivisions granted subsidies or loaned their credit to railroad projects. In some cases railroads were even built directly by the public authorities. The disasters that followed the loaning of public credit to the steam roads and the construction of steam roads as public improvements in the reckless pioneer days, led to the general repudiation of the theory of the railroad as being a public enterprise. The development of transportation lines was left to private initiative endowed with the sovereign power of eminent domain and guided by the sole motive of profit. Although the highway has been from the earliest ages one of the principal assets of the state, the spirit of private enterprise in this country has been so dominant that even the main wagon roads were often in the early days turned over to private corporations to construct and operate for profit. Nevertheless, the public control of the road system is so imperative that most of the toll gates have long since been removed and the turnpike companies have fallen into decay. The railroads, however, which are in reality the most important highways of the country, have remained in private hands, and the right and duty of the state to control them is only beginning to get practical and effective recognition. Even now railroads are built only where and when private capital thinks it sees a chance for profitable investment. For the most part, the interests of the public are conserved, if at all, by the limitations placed upon private initiative in the laws providing for the incorporation of railroad companies or regulating their modes of acquiring special franchises. In the earliest days of the street railway, the public nature of the new undertaking seems in many cases to have been clearly recognized. This is shown by the fact that in the pioneer franchises granted during the decade just before. the Civil War, the great cities often reserved the right to purchase the roads at some future time for public operation. This was true of some or all of the street railway franchises granted in those times by Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Baltimore and New York. After the business had been once firmly established, however, the original reservations of the right to purchase were in a number of instances abrogated. When street railway companies came to be organized under laws adapted specifically to their needs the right of eminent domain, which had been universally conferred upon the steam roads, was in some cases withheld from the street railways. In place of this particular element of sovereign power, there was conferred upon them the even more important privilege of using public property for private profit. The state, in |