The Indianapolis journal., 1897-09-26
FOR CITY OWNERSHIP
MAYOR HARRIsON's PLAN FOR CON-
TROL OF CORPORATIONS.
out confscatfOn of Property
Some Limitations.
New York Journal.

York studying the methods in use in Col
Warnings department for the disposal of
garbage holds advanced opinions on the
question of the municipal ownership of pub
lie franchises.
Though young man, Mayor Harrison
possesses the grasp upon municipal ques-
tions which can only be obtained by inti-
mate acquaintance with all the details of
municipal government The son of a man
who was five times mayor of Chicago, and
who more than most executives of great
cities gave personal and minute attention
to every phrase of municipal work, Mayor
Harrison speaks with the knowledge bred
of his early training well as that OBJ
tanned by his active service as mayor of
Chicago
Last spring Mayor Harrison, in common
with other citizens of Chicago, got new
and sterling proof of the political power
of great corporations holding public grants
and the extent to which they are willing
to proceed in developing those grants and
making them more valuable.
The Legislature of Illinois had then be-
fore it two measures fathered, respective
ly, by the Gas Trust and the Street Rail-
way Trust, the two most powerful COM
binations of capital In Chicago. The one was
designed to enable the several gas compa-
MES in Chicago to unite openly in one great
corporation instead of doing so secretly,
by devious and unlawful means, as had
been the practice and living in constant
dread lest some honest attorney general
annul it's franchises, or some thrifty one
blackmail it with the threat of SO doing.
This measure was passed with reasonable
smoothness and future candidates for at
torney general are likely to miss the lavish
ha TTr11S
made to their predecessors.
But the other corporation measure-the
so-called Allen bill-was different thing,
and this the young mayor of Chicago had
been to the State capital in an endeavor
vain as it proved, to beat. This measure
authorized the extension of the franchises
of the street railroads fifty years. granted
the corporations the right to combine and
permitted each corporation to charge a D.
cent fare on every section of it's system
Made law, as it has been, this measure
stops all effort for reduction of fares, pre-
vents competition and defers indefinitely
any effort for municipal ownership.
Perhaps it was his recent experience in
opposition to the power which forced this
bill through that led Mayor Harrison to
open his conversation by speaking of the
political effect of municipal ownership.
THE stock objection to municipal owner
ship is that b. immensely increasing the
number of necessary employees of the mu-
litical power of the administration which
controlled them" he said. But / don't
hold to this opinion. l believe implicitly
that the director, for example, of gas works
owned and operated by Chicago would ex-
ercise less political power than the president
of private corporation furnishing citizens
with gas"
And yet machines have been built and
made very effective out of the material
supplied by the present comparatively linn
tied number of municipal employees"
BENEFIT ON CITIZENSHIP
YES but as the functions of the nlunic-
ipality are brought closer to the every day
life of the citizen, at every point he has
it impressed upon him that he is being we'll
i'll served by the men he has put in Of
fee, he will become more exacting. To-day
the citizen who is not a heavy taxpayer is
Immediately affected by the water and
street departments of the city government
almost alone He cries out quickly enough
if the water is bad, or if the garbage is not
promptly removed from his alley. Suppose
he had to look to the City Hall for his
light, for his street car facilities, perhaps
for telephone service, would not he be
doubly careful in the exercise of his politi-
cal functions? Wouldn't he insist on the
establishment OF such a reasonable and in
telligent system of civil-service reform as
would give assurance that he was well and
cheaply served? In short the effect of
wide expansion of the functions of the mu-
nicipal government would be two-fold.
First, the citizen, being more Immediately
interested, would discharge his duties a
voter more thoughtfuly and more regular
ly. Second. there would result from it a de-
mand for r. al honest civll-service reform
which the politicians could not ignore and
VIII ch would give the city, particularly in
what might be called Its Industrial depart
ments a trained and unchanging force of
employees. These men, with the knowledge
that public sentiment. would not tolerate
fheir
not be welded into a machine. No, sir; n1u
nicipal ownership would not make the po-
litiC al probe m harder than now"
"But you don't mean that the employees
of quasi-pubIic corporations as they now
stand are an organized political force?"
shrug NO, / Won't say that But you
know how great is the influence an en-
ploying corporation can exert over its men.
/ won't use any uglier word than influence,
though we don't have to look so very far
back to find some curious instances of
the employers. But even set that aside
and great masses of our wOrkngmen are
too sturdy of conviction to be either in
fluenced or coerced into voting against
their honest beliefs-even setting that
aside. the corporations now discharging
semi-public functionS-I don't speak of
those in Chicago alone-are in politics with
their purses. You don't think those street
railway bills went through the Legislature
for nothing, do you? And to what extent
do you suppose that our great corpora
tonS contribute to the campaign funds of
ONCE seekers, ana why 90 Iney DO 1tI III
Chicago owned it's street railroads, would
there be any contribution to aldermanic
funds from street-railroad treasures? You
don't hear of any candidate touching the
water department, but Just go around and
ask any officer of the Gas Trust who his
callers are at election time
Then you unreservedly favor municipal
ownership?
MAYOR MUST NOT BE BURDENED.
mo, don't go too fast. You know my
father established the municipal electric
lighting system here and I learned from
him to believe in the greatest practicable
extension of the useful functions of city
government But the limit is touched when
you throw upon the municipality so many
duties. so many responsibilities that the
mayor becomes physically unable TO give
personal superintendent to all of them
The elder Harrison, who, year after year,
ruled Chicago against the outcry of all its
newspapers as the son has begun to do,
proclaimed the theory that a city is an
armed camp to be ruled by single COM
mander speaking through his aids. 1t is
theory which naturally commends itself
most strongly to the man who is in the
commanding post, and / hear the son
repeat the sturdy, self-asSertive words of
the father. / wonder whether in the young
man, hitherto untried in public place, there
those Qualities of mi