The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1898-08-28
PLANS Of THE POPS
To Have City Municipal! Own
ership Won't Go.
Is RAW PATERNALISM
ImpracticabiIity of Scheme
Is Apparent.

The Eagle Is not convinced that the
property and Taxpayers of the
city Of Wichita are ready to take the
chances and assume the expense and re-
sponsibility OF running electric hight
plants. laundries, street railways, news
papers and other supplies and utilities of
a public character. When the Pop time
comes in the history of the town that the
city must buy with Understanding bonds
electric lighting and power plants. street
railways and the like and turn them over
into the hands of ward politicians, 70 be
run and operated by their strikers and
heelers, it will be time for the owners of
real estate to sell out and stand from I'M
der. Other people can save themselves
by getting out. A five-ndnute car service
where a fifteen-minute one would hardly
pay, would, no doubt, prove convenient
for the few, and furnish employment for
favorites but the property owner who
does not live on such line, or who prefers
burning cheap oil to using electricity,
might not be ready to either put up or
otherwise sell out at sacrifice. No city
lnIOUSA us OlllCCIS can OptI die d p0O44S
or private utility as economically as an
Individual company or corporation, all
Pop talk and Pop petitions to the con-
trary Notwithstanding. With the line
OF the petition, appearing in the Eagle
yesterday morning, carried out, and the
time would be very brief when every alley
IN town would have it's electric light
The renter would pull the heeler, the
heller would pull the ward boss. and the
ward bosses, in conclusion, would do the
rest What would be true Of electric
light plants would be true Of any other
public supply. The gentlemen who are
working this scheme will find that whiIe
the affairs of the county have fallen into
Pop control through the connivance Of
Democrats, who get their pay in offices,
the city council of Wichita is neither
Populistic nor Socialstic, that Wichita is
a Republican city whose people do not
believe that the experiences of centuries
can be suddenly and successfully upset
by a Pop petition. While the street car
service has been anything but satisfac-
tory for some time and while Mayor
Ross administration has somewhat cur
tailed the street lights in the interest OF
economy, thereby saving to the tax-pay-
ers something Ike ten thousand dollars
a year. the real estate and home owners
of the town are not going to be mulcted
that the transient renters of hotels ana
restaurants and that business men may
nave more and cheaper lights. Electric
ity is energy evolved by the burning or
coal, and coal costs twice as much in
Wichita as it does at the Missouri river,
and the city cannot furnish light or pow
err TO the consumer cheaper than anybody
else only by forcing the non-consumer to
pay for what he Goes not get We do
not believe. as was stated by the gentle
men circulating the petition, an account
OF which was given in the Eagle yester-
day morning, that majority Of the bust
ness men approached were favorable TO
calling elections for the purpose OF OBJ
tanning authority tC bond the city and to
buy everything in sight IN the way OF
street cars and e'ectlic light plants. wa
ter works and the IKE. The petition cites
that the city is Authorized under the law
to do these things. The law as Pop
law, passed by Pop legislature and
signed by a Pop governor, and no city IN
Kansas has proved Pop enough to be
caught By it.
But this is not a political question, even
II 1t is being worked by politicians in the
interest of party. Tt is purely an eco
nomical question. and one touching the
pocket of the taxpayer, especially the
real estate and home owner. And how
ever big the petition, or whatever the
city council may do, the men upon whom
tho main burden of the cost would ineV-
itablv fall will be heard from X the
scheme ever reaches the ballot box sta