Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1899-05-15
MUNICIPAL NERSH

It is probable that the principle of
municipal ownership of public utilities
will soon become al issue before the
American people. Mayor Jones of Toledo
type are attracting more attention than
at any time in the past. IN eastern
! writer, in touching upon this question,
gives some information of value concern
ing foreign methods of handling fran
chises. He says:
Surely our people are waking up to
some better understanding of their mu-
nicipal rights, and franchises are no
longer to be at the mere beck of political
and industrial Bosses. Boston her
great subway on UGH terms that it will
be all paid for in &c years, with interest,
and must then be delivered to the city in
as good condition as when received; also
If the traffic exceeds a certain limit, a
share of the profit therefrom goes to the
city. She, too, used to give 50-year leases
without a. bubble, but she has grown
wiser, and SO must we in New York. If
the rapid transit franchise is only one
third the value of all that is asked for in
the proposition of this syndicate for the
tunnel having such vast capabilities as
to transmission of heat, light, air. power
and electricity, It's worth is ncalculable.
Ii the question We're up for discussion
in any city in England>we can easily tell
what would be the decision. About one
third of the street railways in. Great
Britain are owned by the municipalities,
and in Scotland over so per cent of the
traffic is on municipal owned roads. In,
Berlin, Germany, the ~city-owned. inter-
urban roads charge $3.50 a year for, "a
fve-mile ticket, which can, be used as
often as desired, a round trip a day cost
ing less than two cents. -
On the So miles of street railway owned
by the city of Glasgow, the yearly gross
profit is more than $500, 600. There are
l.t30 men employed in its tramway Siys-
tenn, and at better pay and shorter hours
than private companies give, and the
city furnishes the uniforms. Liverpool
own 90 miles of streat-car tracks, which
are leased to a private company for
$1,000 per mile, the city keeping the tracks
in order. Leeds. England, operates her
own street railways, and clears yearly a
net profit Of over SAG, coo.
Tho Brooklyn bridge, owned by New
York n Brooklyn, cost SIS, 600, coo; pass
age by car is 21s cents, foot passengers
free; while on the st. Louis bridge, which
the Goulds bought for less than $40, 00O,-
0oe, the charges are % cents for passage
by rall, and on SONS railroads Is cents,
and 5 cents per foot passenger.
At the meeting of the League of Ameri-
can municipalities at Detroit, President
McVicar said:
1T seems necessary to eliminate from
our cities the private ownership of fran
chises for the m~onopolied use of the
streets. At all events, there must be an
end to the controlling and c%orrupting of
our city governments by those intrusted
with manipulation of public comfort,
even if the last vestige of private owner
ship shall be uprooted."
Glasgow has followed this plan, and it
has a sinking fun device by means of
which inside of fifty years it will supply
water and electric light free to it's citi-
zens and electric and water power at
cost, and gives rides on electric roads
any distance for two cents and furnishes
to all the free use of a magnificent pub
lie library. It's success in making civil
life brighter, sweeter and more health
full has gained for itself the reputation
of being the best-governed city on the
face of the globe. -.
In reply to those who object to, muni-
cipal ownership as illegal, socialistic,
politically demoralizing' or asy more
"wasteful" than private management
we would refer to the exhaustive opinion
of the appellate division of the supreme
court, written by Mr.. Justice Barrett
6 App. Div. 300 which direct
municipal operation to be the normal
method and defends the legality of the
permission to operate by lessees, on the
ground that the method of operation is
only incidental to the essential duty of
the city to provide the means for rapid
transit. And this duty is to extend to
all utilities which require that the work
shall be essentially public and for the
general good Of all the inhabitants of the
! city. Within that sphere of action novel,
ty should impose no veto. Thus it rs Lon
don owns here Guildhall School of Music,
a municipal institution with 200 instruc-
tors. Wurtemberg, Germany, has tele-
phones all over the surface, regardless of
cost to the state, Of the various bureaus
for giving work to laborers, and of all
people who want to use them as a
medium of exchange in sending work
men to places where their labor is need
ed, their transportation also to be al
state expense. So Germany is working
to solve the great question of the or
ganiZation of labor and the employment
of the unemployed. .
In answer to the objection so often
made by New Workers, that our condi-
tons politically are such as to make pub
lie ownership more Objectionable thar Is
. the case in foreign cities, 1 beg to quote
John De Witt Warner: Il nave found