The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-10-03
SOMETHING ABOUT
 TRICK CHARTERS They Are Bad For the Peo- pie and Bad For the
 Corporations. SOME HIGH FINANCE In Which Connecticut Has a Great Deal of
 Interest.
SOME HIGH FINANCE

A phase of prospective street rail- way overcapitalization which made its appearance not long ago In Con necticut serves at once as text and warning to conservative capital in these hustling days when that kind of capital-along with more blame worthy sorts--is so commonly the ob- feet of public and legislative attack We have heretofore had occasion to point out the symptoms and serious ness of the dropsy disease in street railway finance in both Rhode Island and Connecticut and now in the latter State there had come to late a pub lie awakening and reaction, caused Immediately by what was, In effect, the guaranteeing of a four per cent. annual dividend on some $1S,o00,0OO of watered stock of the Connecticut Railway and Lighting company by the New York, New Haven & Hart ford. This aroused public sentiment naturally gave the street railway pro- motors a pause but it was only a temporary pause, evolving into a new and rather original form of subtlely
 At the opening of the last Connee- ticut legislature and during the first few weeks allowed for the introduce ton of new measures, 1t was noticed that there were bills relating to street railway charters remarkable in num- Der for a period of tight money and public suspicion about trolley enter prise, and in a State where, as 1t seemed to the expert eye, profitable trolley territory had been exhausted, l At first these projects did not attract attention. They seemed independent
 of each other isolated, and with no
 coherent and ulterior purpose. But
 presently 1t was observed that they seemed to focus in a definite region l along the shore and in rough paral- lelism to the New Haven companys
 steam line of about fifty miles be-
 tween New Haven and New London and reaching up toward MiddletoWn besides some other proposed parallels in other parts of the State. About the same time two other schemes
 came to the surface. They involved charters like that of the Connecticut
 Railway & Lighting company, which
 gave large power of purchase, absorp-
 ton and merger and unlimited prlvi- lege in the issue of stock. The "pro- noting" scheme in it's full magnitude
 was finally brought to light, namely, the punching of the street railway projects in one or two power com panies next either "sell out of the whole watered outfit to the menaced steam corporation or the building of the parallels and the enlargement of the club to pound the steam company into final surrender. Later in the Isession the scheme was substantially defeated.
 This Connecticut case is cited here 1 only as one of numberless instances
 elsewhere of the workings of high finance" in it's relations to legisla-
 ton. The devices have been many:
 First there is the new charter, seem 1 ingly harmless in shape and forma, in outward character but hidden away in some obscure clause containing the
 desired and dangerous powers. Next
 there is the charter amendment,
 sometimes prolix and masking the
 same evil Again, most subtle and dangerous of all, is the merger" trick
 worked through the minor charter ot
 a small railway enterprise, The small
 charter-so we'll as to the project that it quite escapes notiee-is asked for | and obtained readily. Next come!
 along, a year or two later, the trut