The Celina Democrat. (Celina, O. [Ohio]) 1895-1921, 1913-07-18
CINCINNATPS FIGHT WITH
FRANCHISE THIEVES

Predatory circles in Cincinnati are eX-
periencinga a nightmare, and unlike the
usual nightmare, It will not end in the
great relief of awaking at the climax to
find it all a dream. An election is 10 be
held on July 80 for a charter commission
and the issue is municipal ownership.
There are two tickets, one for municipal
ownership, openly declaring itselfso, and
composed of undoubted advocates of that
. principle; the other, for continued cor
poration rule, pretending not to be, and
composed of the usual eminently re-
spectacle" material which always does
corporation bidding, OF course, the
predatory interests are all working to
elect the latter. The traction company
especially, ably yseconded by the telephone
company, the gas and electric light COM
pany and other local monopolies with
their chief organ, Charles p. Taft's
TimesStar, are trying to raise a cloud of
dust to keep the voters from seeing the
real issue.
The traction company, especially, is in
very hot water 1t is in possession of a
iifty-year franchise, secured in 1896 from
Legislature and city government in the
way that ffty-year franchises usually are
secured. No burglar, piclpoeket or
other predatory individual likes to sur
render his plumber after all the trouble
and expense incurred in getting it. Pred
atory traction companies are no different.
At the last session of the legislature, Rep
resentative Herbert S. Bigelow intro
duced a bill torevoke the stolen fran
chise 1t passed the House, and then
the insidious traction lobby got busy.
Some day, perhaps, another Col
OneI MuIhaI will tell the story of
how Ohio state senator's were in
fiuenced to kill that revocation
bill. In the meantime it will not be
hard to guess, even if guesses backed by
unanswerable logic are not accepted in
court as evidence. Now, after having
labored long and hard to kill that revo-
cation bill, the poor old traction COM
pany finds itself up against municipal
ownership fight, in which the issue is
not to be settled by half dozen easily
influenced State senator's, but by 100,
600 voters. Once the company thought
it saw a way out of its difficulties. 1t
offered to sell out to the city for S29,
OOO 600. This valuation, otensibly fixed
by an unbiased Commissioner, is
about twice the real value of its physical
property, so that the corporations mod |
est proposition that the city pay millions
to get the franchise stolen from it. But
the true inwardness of this proposition
was soon exposed. Herbert S. Bigelow
again earned the enmity of local preda-
tory interests by showing up this bunco
scheme, and now they see him, to their
horror, once more engaged in showing |
up their latest design. The eminentIy
respectable ticket, led by knight
who champions the cause of pub
lie service mOnOpOIies in distress
is pretending to favor some vague
indefinite method of controlling
the corporations. That is a course
that must be expected of corpora
tIOn knights. They never openly
announce the objects of their de-
vOtiOn. They usually pretend to have
no interest in them, yet they bitterly op-
pose those who advocate practical meth
ods of putting an end to monopolistic
power.
The people of Cincinnati will thus be
called to choose between a ticket COM
posed of advocates of municipal owner
ship, advocates who will see that on tax
ing over corporation property not dol