Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-03-08
CHICAGO CAR LINES
Find They Have to 60 Into Politics 10
Get What They Want.
MAYOR CREGIER Is A KICKER.
Az Long as He Rules Magnates Must Pay for
Their Privileges.
THE BARBED wIRE TRUSTS FUTURE
r,pxc1AL rEIxeHAn TO THE p1srArc

rsPECIAL TELEGRAM TO THE DISPATCH
CHICAGO, March TN selfdefence the
street railways of Chicago are taking to pol.
itics as taev never have done before. Their
candidate for the nomination is the ire
pressible Garter Harrison, and the
opposition is led by the present
Mayor, Cregier. Cregier, during his
term of office has incurred their enmity in
various ways. but chiefly and most conspic-
uously by bold and determined effort to
compel them to pay in hard cash for the
franchises which they enjoy.
For instance, the Westside Railway Com
pany. which is controlled and operated by
the Widener-ElkiEs crowd, who operate the
line on Fifth avenue, Pittsburg, has about
II ordinances now pending in the City
Council, granting it the right to extend its
lines along certain streets in districts of the
city which have not yet been penetrated by
the street railways.
Cregier Knows the Business.
Mayor Cregier's policy has been to veto
them as fast as they are passed, and accom-
panying his veto goes recommendation
that clause be annexed requiring the COM
pany to pay certain sum, usually 81 900,
81, 200 or 81 500 per mile per annum, TO the
CITY for the use of the streets in which the
track is to be laid. The Mayor is an old
street railway man and is thoroughly ac-
uuainted with all the inns and outs Of the
business.
For many years the companies have been
taxed only $50 per car; their franchises have
not been taxed at all, and their real estate
- just why, nobody knows - pays
very much less in proportion to
its value than the average of other real
estate. His Honor. the Mayor, announces
that if he is continued in Office he will not
only enforce payment for franchises in the
case of extensions of the existing lines, but
also that he will heartily favor any other
scheme that may be proposed to accomplish
the same end-i. e. to divert to the people a
part of the revenue which now flows in
golden streams into the Golfers of the stock
holders. He thinks an ordinance which was
recently introduced by Alderman Cullerton
providing that street railway shall not
charge in excess of cents for fare is a move
in the right direction, and is in favor of the
imposition of a tax of 2H per cent of the
gross income OF the companies.
The Tax on Net Income.
At this Mr.. Charles Yerkes, the President
of the North Chicago Street Railway
Company. and spokesman of the Wild
ener-Elkins syndicate in Chicago
holds up his hands in holy
horror. He comedies that it might be right
to impose tax of certain percentage of
the net income, but the gross income, never!
And that gives the Mayor a chance to
point out to the public another of the tricks
of the willy Philadelphians. ''The gross in
come we can get al" says he, "but the net
income may at any time be made an infn-
itessimally small quantity by manipulation
of the books. Therefore, will have nothing
to do with anything SO intangible as the net
income"
Of course this is only local fight, but it
is of more than local importance, for if the
right of the people to tax street railway
franchises IS once successfully asserted in
Chicago it will not be long before the people
of all those Western cities which pattern
after Chicago will go and do likewise, and
the scheme may even be duplicated as far
east as Pittsburg. If it should be it would
not be the first time the Gas City OF the East
has profited by the ingenuity of her big
Western sister, for is not the police patrol
system Chicago invention.
Prospects in Barbed Wire.
Though the barbed wire men, after long
struggle, have at last succeeded in forming
a combination, reaching ali over the coun-
try, it Is not by any means seen that
it will last much longer than that of
the window glass men, which a short
time since so ingloriously died. One Chi
cago and one Pittsburg company proved the
hardest to satisfy, and the latter was paci-
fed bya very liberal participation in the
profits, and by the git of the chief place on
the Board of Directors to its representative,
Mr.. George T. Oliver, the talented Pittsburg
lawyer, to whom the noise and dust of an
iron mill proved finally more charming than
the quiet of the Office and the court room.
Speaking OF the window glass combine
the President of one OF the largest COM
panies said to THE DISPATCH correspon-
dent the other day that he did not think it
would even be revived. 'I predicted that
it would die" said he, sand my word has
come true. It would work we'll enough on pa
per, but the idea OF buying up all the product
of the window glass factories of the West,
without dollar OF money in the treasury,
could not be carried out. The directors who
tried it found themselves face to face with
insuperable difficulties, and they had to give
up. Since that time the price of window
glass has fallen 20 per cent, but everybody
Is getting along nicely enough, unless 1t is
the New York trust, the United Glass
Company, which is keeping some Of its fac