52.5 
 
 ' _ : _ 
 
 Public Property in 
 Private Hands 
 
 3<ri. i 
 
 CARTER H. HARRISON 
 
 MAYOR OF CHICAGO 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 PUBLISHED BY PERMISSION OF THE PHILADELPHIA SATUR¬ 
 DAY EVENING POST :: COPYRIGHTED 1902, BY THE CURTIS 
 
 PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 
 
 CLOMESEY A CO., PRINTERS, 84 TO 98 FIFTH AV£ 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2018 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 « 
 
 https://archive.org/details/publicpropertyinOOharr 
 
UNI 
 
 Public Property 
 
 -IN - 
 
 Private Hands 
 
 By CARTER H. HARRISON, Mayor of Chicago 
 
 Published by Permission of the Philadelphia 
 Saturday Evening Post. Copyrighted 
 1902, by the Curtis Publishing Company 
 
 CCOHESEY & COMPANY 
 
 p 
 
 1 
 
 - Printers 
 0 O 
 

s 
 
 \ 
 
 By Mayor Harrison. 
 
 . Twenty years ago municipal ownership of public utilities was 
 commonly regarded as a chimera, as the impractical and fanciful 
 dream of the socialist and theorist. Then it was looked upon as a 
 visionary scheme, pretty and attractive in theory, but too vague and 
 elusive to stand the test of actual practice. To-day it is a practical, 
 definite business proposition, appealing forcefully to each citizen 
 whose judgment is unbiased by ownership of stocks, bonds and other 
 securities, or whose personality is unaffected by the hypnotic influence 
 of such interests, as the one common-sense method of handling in the 
 not distant future a vexatious problem. 
 
 The owner of blocks of stocks and bonds and the speculator in 
 market securities still sees, or fancies he sees, or, as is much to the 
 same purpose, claims he sees, in municipal ownership what with jaun¬ 
 diced judgment he is pleased to term a phase of anarchy. 
 
 Four years of experience in public life have taught me a full 
 appreciation of the many ways in which the public spoliator finds it 
 possible to apply this elastic term of anarchy. Every effort to give 
 fair treatment and justice to the plain every-day citizen, if it touch 
 the wallet of the financier, is at once dubbed anarchy, and the inno¬ 
 cent-minded, whose condition the effort has been made to improve, 
 is asked to condemn it as such. For generations the guileless public 
 has made a handful of its fellows the beneficiaries of franchises to use 
 public property for private gain, either altogether without reciprocal 
 obligation or with obligations quite incommensurate to the advan¬ 
 tages they have enjoyed. 
 
 These franchises for many years have been exercised without a 
 word of protest. For so long has the use of public property for pri¬ 
 vate gain been enjoyed as no more and no less than a rightful per¬ 
 sonal advantage that at length the franchise holder has come to look 
 upon his title as the king or emperor looks upon his right to rule. To 
 his seeming way of thinking the title sprang originally, not from the 
 heedlessness of the public, but from a species of divine origin; and 
 
 P 3e1 3d 
 
■opposition smacks almost of blasphemy. Kings and emperors rule 
 Dei gratia; by a kindred grace of God the street-railway magnate, 
 the gas magnate, the telephone magnate, the electricity magnate and 
 all the other magnates would seem to claim their public grants. 
 
 These grants have been held some for decades, some for gener¬ 
 ations. They have become the patents of nobility of our American 
 moneyed aristocracy. To-day it has come to a pass when, according 
 to the lights of many, to deny in words their justice is dubbed incit¬ 
 ing the people to riot; to deny in act is to raise the red torch and to 
 wave the red flag of anarchy. For years the whole public had ac¬ 
 cepted these conditions without a murmur. The patience of the public 
 and especially the American public, it may be said paranthetically, is 
 so long and so enduring as to merit being turned into a proverb. The 
 explanation, if any be needed, may be found in this, that these fran¬ 
 chises have been held by the first citizens of each community; their 
 general reputation for uprightness and fair dealing has served as a 
 cloak behind which the schemer and the promoter have worked se¬ 
 cretly, industriously and in perfect security. 
 
 THE SYSTEM ALREADY TESTED ABROAD. 
 
 Gradually word came to the ears of the plain citizen of this 
 country that in the cities of Great Britain and of the Continent pub¬ 
 lic ownership was not looked upon as a dream, nor were its advocates 
 denounced as enemies of organized society. The Anglomania of the 
 rich, the aping by the franchise-holding coterie of the dress, the 
 manners, the ideas of the little tight isle, the marriages of its daugh¬ 
 ters to the scions of English families, the rush of many of its mem¬ 
 bers for homes among and companionship with England’s people, 
 might have served as excusable incentives to the every-day citizen to 
 practice a little Anglomania in public ownership on his own part, if 
 any incentive, other than the beneficial results to be obtained, were 
 needed. 
 
 He learned that in the capitals of Europe, where advanced mu¬ 
 nicipal thought favored public ownership, practical business sense 
 ■was putting it into operation. He found it not only considered 
 right in theory, but actually working well in practice. The 
 more he studied the question the more favorably he came to look upon 
 
5 
 
 it. He weighed the arguments in its favor and found them convinc¬ 
 ing; he analyzed the arguments against it and found them false and 
 misleading. As a result of his studies and observations the thoughtful 
 citizen of to-day looks to municipal ownership as the certain ultimate 
 method of handling practically and sensibly the public utilities of a 
 municipality. 
 
 The claim that the theory under discussion is a species of anarchy 
 is too absurd to demand more than cursory mention. A single state¬ 
 ment should suffice to explode so threadbare an argument. Glasgow 
 is not an anarchistic city nor is the canny Scot in general considered 
 either wildeyed or visionary. By common consent he is adjudged a 
 shrewd, level-headed man, with more of logic in his mental make-up 
 than of poetry—though he lacks not the latter—and with a greater 
 love for the dollar than for unproductive, though rosy tinted, dreams. 
 In Glasgow public ownership has advanced to the stage where the city 
 owns and operates, to the satisfaction of the user as well as to the 
 profit of the municipality, not only the water system, but the street 
 cars, the gas works and the telephone system. Yet it has not so far 
 been claimed, even in the most ultra of financial circles, that the me¬ 
 tropolis of the Land of the Heather is flying the red flag of anarchy. 
 Investigation rather develops the information that the rates charged 
 to the public for the service are low, while the profits to the public re¬ 
 sulting from public operation are so great that taxes have reached 
 their low-water mark. 
 
 Greater force is found in the argument that public ownership 
 would result in a standing army of city employees who, because of 
 the method of their appointment, would prove unsatisfactory ser¬ 
 vants, and who, on account of their number, would control city 
 elections. 
 
 These are queer arguments, however, to be propounded by the 
 beneficiaries of the present system of public franchise grants. No 
 greater number of employees would be employed by any given utility, 
 operated under public ownership, than is employed to-day under pri¬ 
 vate ownership. This is, or at least it would seem to be, a self-evident 
 proposition. Nor would the taking of a utility under public owner- 
 
6 
 
 ship put its employees in politics to any greater extent than they are 
 to-day. This is a self-evident proposition, to the initiated at least. 
 
 Patronage has been dubbed the curse of politics. It is certainly 
 the bane of the average politician. When a political victory has been 
 won by an alderman or a councilman he is at once beset by the hun¬ 
 gry faithful for a share of the spoils of war. There are many more 
 applicants for the jobs in the municipal gift than there are jobs to be 
 given. The alderman-elect is suppoosed to be in favor with the pub¬ 
 lic-service corpoorations because of favors to be asked and favors to 
 be granted. The corporations are anxious to serve the new official— 
 and, incidentally, to place him under obligations. The faithful polit¬ 
 ical worker is persistent in his appeals for what he and his friends call 
 “recognition." Recognition, in the political dictionary, means a tan¬ 
 gible reward for work done—in other words, a job. A call or two 
 at the general offices of the corporation, a letter or two, and for the 
 new official a troublesome visitor has been disposed of. 
 
 PERNICIOUS ACTIVITY OF SOME CORPORATIONS. 
 
 Nor is it only in the method of their appointment that employees 
 of public-service corporations may be said to be in politics. Common 
 report asserts that not infrequently these corporations become very 
 busy about election time. The charge has been made in Chicago, for 
 
 instance, that a certain election has been won or lost bv what is called 
 “the car-barn vote.” From the very nature of things public-service 
 
 corporations have both friends to assist and enemies to punish. Cor¬ 
 porations may have no souls, but their managers at times have very 
 long memories, marvelous faculties for harboring a grudge, and very 
 long knives to sheathe in the backs of those who have stood in their 
 way. Municipal elections are in these days expensive affairs, and cor¬ 
 porations, it is said, frequently find it to their interest to make large 
 donations of funds to the side in which they are interested. 
 
 I have known of several local elections in which word has gone 
 forth from certain corporation offices that one ticket should receive 
 the support of its employees and that another ticket should be knifed. 
 A barn-boss has been accused of sending for the employees to tell 
 them what the company expected. The employees have been handed 
 lithographs which they were ordered to place in their windows and 
 
7 
 
 buttons which they were ordered to wear on the lapels of their coats. 
 They have been told their prosperity hangs upon the outcome of the 
 election, and they have been advised in no uncertain manner on which 
 side of the slice of bread the street-car butter was spread. 
 
 In short, the employees of the companies enjoying public grants 
 are as much in politics to-day and are as dominant political factors as 
 could possibly be the employees of a municipally operated utility, even 
 were the latter to be appointed under the old-time spoils system. I 
 have always held that the prerequisite of municipal ownership of any 
 utility was a fast, firm, rigid civil-service system under which men 
 were selected for their merit, retained for their good behavior and 
 advanced for their ability. If merit be the test for original appoint¬ 
 ment and ability, as well as faithful service the measure of after-ad¬ 
 vancement in the service, the employees under municipal domination 
 would have but little time to do more than to exercise their right of 
 citizenship: to vote. 
 
 To those who fear municipal operation and its fancied dangers 
 the advocate thereof comes with reassuring words. It is both 
 possible and practicable to have ownership of utilities without oper¬ 
 ation of them. Take the street-car utility as an example. A city may 
 reserve to itself the ownership of rights-of-way and lay the rails along 
 them, and then lease to the highest bidder at public auctions held at 
 stated intervals the right to operate upon those rails tramway cars 
 subject to certain preimposed conditions. This is the Toronto sys¬ 
 tem and constitutes actual public ownership. It works to the satis¬ 
 faction of the citizens of the busy Canadian city, we are told; and I, 
 for one, fail to see the prints of the red hand of anarchy anywhere 
 upon it. Public ownership, properly administered and correctly ap¬ 
 plied, would not lead to the improper influencing of elections by the 
 creation of a standing army of employees; rather may it be asserted, 
 the system would reach farther toward a purification of politics than 
 any advance step in the conduct of municipal affairs that could to-day 
 be suggested. 
 
 THE DEBAUCHERY OF PRESENT CONDITIONS. 
 
 The curse of American public affairs may be found in the pre¬ 
 vailing system of so-called machine politics, in boss rule, and in the 
 
8 
 
 attending improper influencing and debauching of public officials. 
 There are few cities in the nation in which the tongue of scandal has 
 not been busy at times, if not at all times, in charging corruption and 
 debauchery against the legislative branch of their government. 
 
 Nor do municipal executives go altogether scot-free. Ex¬ 
 ecutives have been charged with securing for their own ends, 
 their individual gain and profit, the passage of ordinances creating 
 franchises of all characters and descriptions. Aldermen have 
 been charged with profiting by these grants. The very 
 granting of public franchises opens wide the doors to undue in¬ 
 fluence and improper motives. Aldermen are frequently assailed as 
 being in the market offering their votes to the highest bidder when a 
 plum in the shape of a franchise is to be bartered away; even more, 
 they are charged at times with being unwilling to vote for any meas¬ 
 ure, no matter how meritorious it may be, if, directly or incidentally, 
 it concerns a company operating under a public franchise—unless it 
 may be made worth their while so to vote. 
 
 These charges have been bandied about with so much of free¬ 
 dom, and in many cases with so firm a basis of justice, that in the eyes 
 of the super-suspicious the holding of public office is of itself almost a 
 badge of corruption. Thus public morals are being undermined. Per¬ 
 sonal honesty and private integrity will not long survive general doubt 
 of the existence of public and official morality. Individual honesty and 
 official integrity are closely correlated; indeed the two virtues are 
 inseparable. The one is an absolute index to the other. Public 
 morals weaken and finally fail when private morality is at a low ebb; 
 private morals reflect with all its shameful ugliness debauchery in 
 public life. 
 
 Party politics in large cities, constituted as it is to-day, revolves 
 largely about a centre of corruption. Officials, whether of high or 
 low station, are the constant target of temptation. Read the files of 
 the daily newspapers. If a tithe of the charges be true, inspectors 
 and other minor employes have been lured from the straight and nar¬ 
 row path of duty; chiefs of bureaus and department heads have been 
 blind to their public obligations; councils, with flagrant and notorious 
 contempt of public opinion, have bartered away public rights; execu- 
 
tives have nodded when great magnates have beckoned; taxing bodies 
 have ignored the law and defied public opinion that corporation taxes 
 might be scaled down to a minimum; court bailiffs have become the 
 hirelings of corporations in debauching trial by jury; judges have in¬ 
 clined their ears attentively to the voice of temptation; juries, packed 
 for ulterior purposes, or corrupted after impaneling, have, false to 
 their oaths and recreant to their duty, thrown the law and the evidence 
 to the winds. 
 
 All this awful arraignment of conditions as they exist in many of 
 the great municipalities of the land is directly and inevitably traceable 
 to the influence of the beneficiaries of public franchises. The picture 
 is not drawn for the sake of misrepresentation of facts nor to pander 
 to the sensational. The columns of the daily press in New York, in 
 Chicago, in Philadelphia, if hastily scanned for the past six months, 
 will furnish established cases to prove the truth of each charge. The 
 disease exists; the duty of the patriotic citizen lies first in finding the 
 remedy and then in applying it, no matter how heroic it may be. 
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CRUSADE AGAINST BOODLE. 
 
 Chicago to-day is in a period of revival; for a generation or more 
 there was indifference and resulting decline. The public slumbered in 
 apathy and public morals suffered. Finally there came an awakening, 
 due in large measure to a high moral tone in the daily press, as well 
 as to the tireless and for a time thankless labors of public-spirited 
 associations. All that was needed was to arouse the public from its 
 lethargy. And so it has come to pass that the people’s eyes are open, 
 and the first demand made upon a city official is that he look to the 
 public as his master and not to the managers of great corporations. 
 For the past decade public opinion has waged a fierce and unrelenting 
 warfare against what is known as boodle in politics. For its first 
 fruits the city has obtained an honest city council. To-day the crusade 
 is already on for an honest legislature. 
 
 Why should such crusades be necessary? Think of the shame of 
 it! Chicago, the most progressive of American cities, the one great city 
 which has rescued its city council from corporation thraldom obliged, 
 at the dawn of the twentieth century, to battle for honesty in the body 
 that makes the laws of the State! 
 
10 
 
 Were public ownership of public utilities desirable on no other 
 grounds, in the widespread debauchery of public servants by existing 
 corporations could be found good and ample reason for the innova¬ 
 tion. 
 
 Theorists make much of the argument that a private company 
 can operate with greater economy than would be possible under a 
 system of public ownership. Theorists delight in the abstract; the 
 practical man likes to reduce a theory to a concrete condition. As an 
 abstract theory this argument has a convincing sound; let us see how 
 well it works out in practice. Economy of operation means increase 
 of profit. Increase of profit may be applied to betterment of service, 
 to reduction of price, to increase of wages, or to enlargement of divi¬ 
 dends. The first three applications might be obtained under public 
 ownership; the last is the almost inevitable result under private own¬ 
 ership. 
 
 For the sake of getting at concrete facts let us consider conditions 
 as they exist in the management of street car companies. In what 
 city of the land are patrons provided with additional seats for the 
 bare reason that the income of the company is on the rise? It is a 
 well-established fact that standing room is easy and cheap; and it is 
 an axiom in the directors’ room of a street car company that the fare 
 of each man who hangs on a strap is, in the language of a poker 
 player, so much pure velvet. How often are additional transfers 
 given as a voluntary contribution of the directorate to the public 
 which pays the freight? To increase the number of transfer stations 
 means a corresponding reduction of profit. How often are fares re¬ 
 duced merely because a large surplus is burdening the treasury? The 
 street car manager, in his zeal for the public good and with a charm¬ 
 ing ingenuousness, tells how troublesome it is to the public to handle 
 anything smaller than a nickel fare. Making change wastes the dear 
 public's time, and besides, pennies are such difficult coins to handle. 
 The pay of employes is not increased to-day except when long and 
 disastrous strikes have destroyed valuable property, cost many lives, 
 demoralized the public with a face-to-face acquaintance with the evils, 
 the horrors, the tragedies of a riot. 
 
 Betterment of service, reduction of fare, increase of wages might 
 
11 
 
 be obtained under public control; under private management new 
 stock is issued, false bond issues are marketed, barrels of water are 
 poured into the securities, and dividends and interest money are paid 
 thereon. 
 
 If public management should prove uneconomical what would 
 be the cause; Lines would be extended not merely for the earning of 
 money, nor for the purpose of shutting out possible competition, but to 
 suit the convenience of the public. There might be lack of judgment, 
 or a too easy complacency in extending feeder lines into unproductive 
 territory; such extravagance would be more than made up by the 
 miles and miles of rail which could be removed in almost any city 
 from streets where the iron has been laid for no other purpose under 
 the heavens than to prevent some rival company from obtaining a 
 competing right-of-way. 
 
 Wages would be a fair compensation for a fair day’s work, and 
 the surplus earnings would apply toward the lowering of general tax¬ 
 ation, toward providing for the necessities and the giving of a few 
 luxuries to the people at large, not as under private ownership, toward 
 swelling the bank accounts of already overrich stockholders. Figured 
 to its ultimate solution public ownership would mean the profit of the 
 many rather than the profit of the few. Under it the reason for the 
 watering of stocks would disappear. Huge bulks of securities would 
 no longer be saddled on an unsuspecting public. A hard blow would 
 be struck at the speculative world perhaps, but it is doubtful whether 
 any lasting disturbance of its nerve centres would ensue, or whether 
 anything but a permanent benefit to legitimate business ventures would 
 be the result. 
 
 The situation might be summed up something after this fashion: 
 Public ownership once correctly established would be a godsend to our 
 municipalities in particular, as well as to the nation at large. As an 
 absolute prerequisite, however, public ownership demands the estab¬ 
 lishment of a stable civil-service system, sufficiently rigid to prove a 
 bar to the introduction of political methods, sufficiently elastic to per¬ 
 mit the recognition of efficient service and the giving of adequate 
 reward. 
 
 In short, the first effort of those who believe in public control 
 
1Z 
 
 should be directed toward the establishment in every municipality of 
 a genuine, common-sense, business-like civil service system, free from 
 the frills, the furbelows, the ultra refinements of the professional re¬ 
 former; a service which will make merit the sole ground for original 
 appointment and merit the sole stepping-stone to advancement. 
 
 Without a proper merit system, so firmly established as to be a 
 guaranty of efficient and honest service, public ownership would be a 
 curse to the community in which it was given trial; with such a civil 
 service installed for a sufficient space of time to weed out the bad and 
 nurture and strengthen the good it would mean better service, a cheap¬ 
 ening of cost to the public, recognition of the people’s rights, a better¬ 
 ment of the condition of the employes. Last but not least, it would 
 go far toward securing for a municipality freedom from gang politics, 
 with its attendant evils of boss rule, boodle legislation and public 
 spoliation.