STREET CAR STRIKE 
 
 MUNICIPAL 
 
 OWNERSHIP 
 
 Addresses by 
 
 WILLIAM PRENTISS 
 

 <* C 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 The first of these speeches was delivered during the street¬ 
 car strike of the employees of the Chicago City Railway 
 Co. The meeting was held at Tattersalls, the Seventh 
 Regiment Armory, Sunday afternoon, November 22, 1903. 
 There were in the hall at the time about 15,000 people, and 
 nearly as many more on the outside adjacent thereto. 
 
 The second address was delivered in the Council Cham¬ 
 ber of the City Hall. There were present, besides the 
 Transportation Committee, about one hundred other citi¬ 
 zens. This was December 7, 1903, the first day of the 
 hearing before the committee. 
 
 V 
 

 THE CITY RAILWAY STRIKE AND MUNICI¬ 
 PAL OWNERSHIP. 
 
 SPEECH OF WILLIAM PRENTISS, AT TAT- 
 TERSALL’S, CHICAGO, SUNDAY, NO¬ 
 VEMBER 22, 1903. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 You know as well as I what brought you here this 
 afternoon. You are in the midst of one of the most 
 important struggles in the history of this country, or 
 any other. On one side are millions of ill-gotten wealth 
 and on the other are justice and manhood and woman¬ 
 hood. It is not a contest merely between the Chicago 
 City Railway and Division Number 260 of the Street 
 Railway men. Organized capital has seen fit to make 
 this a vital contest, and has arrayed against the work¬ 
 ing men and the common people of this country all the 
 forces that money can get together. 
 
 I want to call your attention—and, through you, the 
 attention of the people of this city—to what the Chi¬ 
 cago City Railway Company is. It was the first street 
 railway corporation in Chicago. It began with almost 
 nothing—one hundred thousand dollars capital, a mile 
 of road, twenty-five horses and four cars. From that 
 
a 
 
 it has become the wealthiest street railway corporation 
 that ever existed in the world, and every dollar of that 
 added wealth came out of the men, women and chil¬ 
 dren of Chicago. 
 
 I have here a little book (holding up a book). It 
 is not a book issued by an advocate of municipal own¬ 
 ership. It is not a book issued by laboring men. It 
 is a book issued by the Civic Federation of Chicago— > 
 the aristocratic economists of this city. Among the 
 members of it were such men as Franklin H. Head, 
 Franklin MacVeagh, Edwin Burritt Smith, Newton A. 
 Partridge, and others like them. It was issued about 
 two years ago—in 1901—and it gives a history of the 
 street railways of Chicago. It obtained the facts from 
 the books of the street railway corporations, which for 
 the first time opened them to anyone outside of the 
 companies; and the Civic Federation employed experts 
 to examine the books. I wish every citizen in the City 
 of Chicago could read this book. It would show them 
 that in sixteen years—from 1882 to' 1898'—there was 
 distributed in dividends to the stockholders of the Chi¬ 
 cago City Railway Company over thirty-seven millions 
 of dollars; that upon the capital invested they received 
 annually for those sixteen years over 44 per cent interest 
 in the way of profits. , 
 
 Now what has this Railway Company done in return 
 
 for this? You may know what we lawyers all know, 
 that the decisions of our Supreme Court are reported 
 in volumes. Every decision is written out and is pub¬ 
 lished in a book, and in Volume 191 of these Illinois 
 Reports there is a very interesting decision. You can 
 get the Report in the Public Library or in the Law 
 Institute or in the office of almost any lawyer. I wish 
 
3 
 
 that the people of this city could read this decision in 
 that Report. It is found on page 528 (Vol. 191), the 
 title of the case being' State Board of Equalization v. 
 the People of the State of Illinois. 
 
 In 1900 the school teachers of this city discovered 
 that the public service corporations of Chicago were 
 not paying taxes upon their capital stock, including fran¬ 
 chises ; that all they had paid and were paying was upon 
 a comparatively small amount of tangible property 
 which they possessed; that upon their most valuable 
 property—their franchises—they were paying practically 
 nothing. So the teachers, under the leadership of two 
 of the ablest and truest women of this or any other 
 country (Catherine Goggin and Margaret A. Haley), 
 proceeded to examine into it. They went before the 
 State Board of Equalization, whose duty under the law 
 was to assess this capital stock, including franchises, 
 and informed them what thev had found. 
 
 This State Board of Equalization is the servant of 
 the people. You elect that Board, and the members are 
 sworn to obey the law and perform their duties under 
 it, and yet for years twenty or more of these great 
 public service corporations in this city had paid prac¬ 
 tically no tax upon the great amount of wealth they 
 possessed. At the head of the list of these criminal 
 tax-dodgers was the Chicago City Railway Company. 
 For nearly twenty years that Railway Company paid no 
 tax of any consequence upon its capital stock—during 
 almost the entire life of the franchise which it obtained 
 in 1883. It, with other rich public service corporations 
 in this city, had yearly gone down to the State Board 
 of Equalization at Springfield and “persuaded" that 
 body in the way they know so well to relieve them of 
 their just taxes. That corporation has not on the aver¬ 
 age for twenty years paid more than about one-twenti¬ 
 eth of the tax that it should have paid. For every 
 
4 
 
 twenty dollars that was due the people in taxes it only 
 paid one. 
 
 Now, why do I speak of this? I will tell you why: 
 Does the working man who owns a little home or has 
 a little personal property escape taxation? (Cries of 
 “No, no.”) He pays every dollar of the taxes law¬ 
 fully due from him, and often much more. And yet, 
 what have you seen in this city recently? You have 
 seen that lawless corporation, the Chicago City Rail¬ 
 way Company, that has failed and refused to pay its 
 just taxes for years, having appropriated for its exclu¬ 
 sive use one-half of the entire police force of this city, 
 while the honest, law-abiding citizens of this city, who 
 pay their taxes, have been compelled to go without police 
 protection entirely during the last ten days. And this 
 ip. order that this lawless corporation should have the 
 police force of the city used to run its street cars for it. 
 
 I concede that it is the duty of the executive of this 
 city to keep the peace; there is no doubt about that; and 
 no law-abiding citizen wants the Mayor to do anything 
 else; but I submit, is it not his duty equally to keep the 
 burglar from the home of the honest citizen, and to 
 protect the honest citizen who may be walking to or 
 from his home at night free from being attacked by 
 highwaymen? (Cries of “That’s right.”) Isn’t that 
 his duty as much as it is to send the police force to 
 protect and help a lawless corporation that hasn’t paid 
 its just taxes in twenty years? (Loud applause.) 
 
 Now, who are these policemen? Who pays them? 
 The tax-payers of Chicago pay them. The Chicago 
 City Railway doesn’t pay them. Yet practically one- 
 half of the entire police force of the city is used to pro¬ 
 tect and guard its property, while the honest, tax-paying, 
 law-abiding citizens of Chicago have to defend them¬ 
 selves, single-handed and alone, against burglary and rob- 
 
s 
 
 bery and every other crime that may be committed in 
 the community. (Loud and continued applause.) 
 
 I agree with Mayor Harrison that it is his duty to 
 uphold the law, keep the peace and protect life and 
 property, but the honest working man and the honest 
 citizen have the same right to be protected as a big rail¬ 
 road corporation. (Cries of “That’s right,” and loud 
 applause.) Another thing—when you get into a quar¬ 
 rel with your neighbor the law doesn’t step in and help 
 the great big fellow lick the little one, does it? (Cries 
 of “No, sir”). The law makes both of you keep the 
 peace, and then it says to you “Go to the courts to settle 
 or arbitrate your difficulties:” (cries of “Gives justice to 
 both”). The law says “Go to the courts and settle your 
 difficulties or arbitrate them; we cannot take sides be¬ 
 tween you.” But here is a controversy between this 
 railroad company and its employes, and the employes 
 say, “Come to court, let’s arbitrate this trouble between 
 us; let’s settle it as men should always be willing to 
 settle troubles between themselves.’’ The men have pro¬ 
 posed every form of arbitration. They said to this street 
 railway corporation long before this strike commenced, 
 “We will pick one man, you pick another man; let those 
 two select a third, and we will submit our case to them, 
 and will abide by their decision.” And they said more: 
 The men said, ‘IWe want the investigation to be public. 
 We want the people of Chicago and the press of Chicago 
 to know all about this controversy, and to judge between 
 the Chicago City Railway Company and its employes.” 
 But the Street Car Company said, “No, we won’t do 
 that; we won’t arbitrate.’ 5. They said: “We will settle 
 our way or not at all” The State Board of Arbitration, 
 as was its duty under the law, intervened, and the street 
 car employes said, “We will leave it to the State Board 
 
6 
 
 of Arbitration to settle.' But the Company said, “No,” 
 again and again. Then when the strike began, Mr. Bliss 
 and Mr. Hamilton, the General Counsel and the Presi¬ 
 dent of the Chicago City Railway Company, went 
 straightway to the Mayor of the city and demanded po¬ 
 lice protection for their cars (cries of “They got it). 
 They had said, “We won’t arbitrate; we won’t settle this 
 difficulty in a peaceable way; we won’t settle it as honest 
 men ought to settle it"; but now they said, “We demand 
 that you, Mr. Mayor, take the police force—all of it, if 
 necessary—to protect our property in this city" (cries of 
 “and got the city’s protection’’). And this demand was 
 acceded to. 
 
 Now, gentlemen, what is the situation? Here is a 
 corporation that has been getting nickels out of the peo¬ 
 ple continuously ever since 1859 until it has made great 
 fortunes for its stockholders. It has refused to treat 
 fairly with its employes; it has refused to pay its just 
 taxes; it has so far as it could brought chaos in the City 
 of Chicago; it has opened the way to the burglar and 
 the robber and other criminals in one-half of the City of 
 Chicago. And yet, in the face of all this, and more, it 
 has the audacity to say to the Mayor and City Council 
 of Chicago, “Give me another twenty years’ privilege to 
 rob and outrage the people of Chicago." (Loud ap¬ 
 plause. ) 
 
 I hold in my hand a book—you see the size of it— 
 nearly a foot long, and eight inches wide; it has sixty- 
 seven pages in it. What do you suppose this is ? It is 
 a proposed ordinance for the Chicago City Railway 
 Company. This is what this Chicago City Railway Com¬ 
 pany is asking of your servants, the Mayor and the City 
 Council of this city. After months and months of nego¬ 
 tiation with the Street Railway Company, last week this 
 
7 
 
 ordinance was presented by tiie sub-committee of the 
 Transportation Committee to the full committee as a 
 tentative ordinance. This is the ordinance that the Chi¬ 
 cago City Railway Company is to get from your servants 
 and mine. (Cries of “No, no.”) Why, do you suppose 
 that our public officials would throw away all their val¬ 
 uable time? Do you suppose that the City of Chicago 
 would hire two high-priced lawyers—Mr. Edwin Bur- 
 ritt Smith and Mr. John C. Mathis—and give them big 
 pay, and that they would work out and produce (spend¬ 
 ing months of valuable time) and print a document like 
 this if they did not intend to put it through? Our ser¬ 
 vants, our representatives, have printed this at our ex¬ 
 pense. They hired the lawyers, Mr. Smith and Mr. 
 Mathis, at our expense, and these aldermen are paid out 
 of the City Treasury. They have labored and brought 
 forth this document for the Chicago City Railway Com¬ 
 pany. How much do you suppose this is worth? It is 
 worth at least fifty millions of dollars —and General 
 Manager McCulloch calls it <( our franchise.” Now, I 
 want to know if this is going to be permitted in this city 
 (cries of “No, no”) ? This Street Railway Company, 
 if it had not felt sure that it was going to get this fran¬ 
 chise, would not have dared to have forced this strike on 
 Number 260. It assumed that as it had been lawless 
 from the time it was created: that as it had heretofore 
 gone to the City Council and had always gotten every¬ 
 thing it asked for, that it could do about anything on 
 the face of the earth it pleased, and that the people of 
 this community would submit. But “there is a tide in 
 the affairs of men which, taken at its flood, leads on to 
 fortune.” That tide has come to the people of Chicago. 
 Many times in the history of men has it been that a na¬ 
 tion or a class has become so unreasonable, unjust and 
 
8 
 
 arrogant as to precipitate a conflict that ended their ca¬ 
 reers forever. In the history of this country when the 
 slaveholders undertook to perpetuate their favorite insti¬ 
 tution by force, and made war upon the Union of these 
 states, they sounded the death knell of slavery. The 
 Civil War thus begun abolished the favorite institution 
 of the slaveholder forever. 
 
 My friends, a situation is upon us that is serious and 
 important. Number 260 is going to win its fight; there 
 need be no fear about that. When I read the other 
 morning what Number 241 had done—that four thou¬ 
 sand brave street car boys had voted five thousand dol¬ 
 lars a week for the benefit of the bovs of 260, and when 
 
 m> ' 
 
 I learned what the laboring men of Chicago and over 
 the country were doing, I knew that the strike on the 
 part of 260 was as sure to win as the sun was to go 
 down today. But, my countrymen, this is not enough. 
 At no time in its recent history has the Chicago City 
 Railway Company been so weak as it is today. What do 
 you suppose will happen to Number 260, or to any other 
 Union of street car men that may be working for it, if 
 that Company gets this twenty-year franchise? There 
 is a remedy for all this: If you expect street cars to be 
 run for the benefit of all the people, rather than for the 
 benefit of a few rich men, they must be run by the 
 people, for the people. If you expect the men who do 
 the work and run the cars to be treated like men, to re¬ 
 ceive wages that men ought to receive, to receive the treat¬ 
 ment and consideration that noble and true boys ought to 
 receive, you must place their case in the hands of the hon¬ 
 est people of this city (cries of “Aye, aye”). You can 
 never trust a private corporation, for it will grind money 
 out of men, women and children as it would grind it out 
 of a piece of wood, iron or steel. They care for nothing 
 but money (cries of “No”); they run the street cars foi' 
 
9 
 
 money; they buy labor to make money out of it, and they 
 want to buy it as cheap as possible. They don’t care how 
 many hours they make men work, or the hardships they 
 endure. They don’t care how many lives they take, if 
 only they can make more money for idle millionaires, 
 (loud and continued applause.) There is only one rem¬ 
 edy for this—and that is municipal ownership. (Contin¬ 
 ued applause.) 
 
 In this Supreme Court case reported in 191 Ill., every 
 single one of those corporations that had refused to pay 
 its taxes and had annually “induced” the State Board of 
 Equalization to violate the law and their oaths of office, 
 and enable them to dodge their taxes, was a public serv¬ 
 ice corporation. In the list are included all the big street 
 railway companies in Chicago, the big Gas Company of 
 Chicago, the Chicago Telephone Company, and every one 
 of them was an institution that ought to be owned and 
 controlled by the people themselves. (Applause.) Who 
 is it that buys City Councils? Who is it that buys State 
 Legislatures? Who is it that buys the National Con¬ 
 gress? Who is it that bribes juries, and corrupts the 
 servants of the people? It is these public service corpora¬ 
 tions that are doing work that ought to be done by the 
 people themselves in their own interest. 
 
 This strike, this conflict between the Chicago City 
 Railway Company and its employes, is an object lesson 
 to the people of this city. It has, I hope, fully opened 
 the eyes of the working men and women of Chicago. 
 You have now an opportunity such as you will perhaps 
 never have again in your lives. You have an oppor¬ 
 tunity such as may never again come to the people of 
 Chicago. You have heard of Philadelphia—that city 
 where independence was born; the place where the Dec¬ 
 laration of Independence was written and proclaimed to 
 the world—yet that old city, that once noble city, that 
 
10 
 
 once grand city of Philadelphia, is today absolutely in the 
 hands of its public service corporations, helpless as a 
 babe. 
 
 When Virginia ceded the Northwest Territory to the 
 United States, that territory, of which Illinois is a part, 
 chiefly through the influence of the author of the Dec¬ 
 laration of Independence, was made forever free from 
 the blight of slavery. My countrymen, when you and 
 your children and your grandchildren shall come to read 
 the history of their country they will find no more inter¬ 
 esting part than the history of Illinois. They will read 
 that Illinois gave to America and the world the great lib¬ 
 erator, Abraham Lincoln. (Applause.) They will read 
 that in i860, in the city of Chicago, Abraham Lincoln 
 was nominated to the Presidency of the United States. 
 They will read that in all the history of men there has 
 been nothing like Chicago: We celebrated last month 
 the Centennial of the building of Fort Dearborn. In 
 one hundred years Chicago rose to a city of two millions 
 of souls. In this city more extraordinary events have 
 taken place within the same length of time than in any 
 city in the world. In 1871 the greater part of it was 
 burned to the ground, yet she was builded up again as 
 no city ever was before, and that, too, by the laboring 
 men of Chicago. (Great applause.) In 1892 and 1893 
 was celebrated in this city the discovery of America, by 
 the World’s Fair, and a most wonderful, a most marvel- 
 ousc exposition it was. Most extraordinary things have 
 been accomplished by Chicago. Chicago never yet un¬ 
 dertook in dead earnest to do anything that it did not do. 
 ( Applause.) 
 
 But now we have reached the most critical period in 
 its history—and what shall be that history? Shall Chi¬ 
 cago find herself bound hand and foot like Philadelphia 
 (cries “No, no”), or shall Chicago break her fetters 
 
II 
 
 and demand that the people of Chicago shall be free, 
 and free forever? Shall they not say to these corrupt 
 and corrupting public corporations, “You have already 
 feasted and fattened too long upon the people of Chi¬ 
 cago , we propose now to look after and attend to our 
 own business, and see to it that the example of the great 
 liberator of men—Abraham Lincoln—shall be followed.” 
 (Loud and continued applause.) 
 
 But, ah, they say “Chicago cannot own and operate 
 her street railways.” If the people of Chicago cannot 
 do better than the Chicago City Railway has done, and 
 better than the other street railways of Chicago have 
 done, I would disown being one of her citizens. (Great 
 applause.) I know that she can attend to her own busi¬ 
 ness, and I believe that she will attend to her own busi¬ 
 ness. (Applause.) 
 
 Somebody exclaimed, here in the audience the other 
 night, that if these aldermen undertook to pass this 
 franchise, “String them up! Hang them!” I wouldn't 
 do that. You are law-abiding people; you wouldn't do 
 that; you don't have to do that; Chicago doesn’t do good 
 work in that way. What we want to do is to make the 
 members of that City Council and the Mayor remember 
 that the people of Chicago are in the saddle. (Great ap¬ 
 plause. ) They want to understand that the government 
 of this city is the people's government; that the govern¬ 
 ment of the state is the people’s; that the government of 
 the nation is ours—the people's—and that they belong to 
 nobody else. 
 
 Suppose the Chicago City Railway Company should 
 send an agent out to do business for it, and suppose the 
 man it proposed to do business with should buy up its 
 agent, what on earth would the Chicago City Railway do 
 with that agent? (Cries of “Fire him.”) Why, of 
 
12 
 
 course, it would “fire” him, and send him to the peniten¬ 
 tiary, too. Wouldn’t it? (Cries “Yes, yes.”) 
 
 My friends, we want to know by what authority these 
 men in the City Council propose to grant this franchise 
 to this Street Railway Company. They know that in do¬ 
 ing so they would violate their obligations to the people 
 of Chicago, because those men are not ignorant; the peo¬ 
 ple have instructed them on the question of municipal 
 ownership. In every ward in this city the people voted 
 overwhelmingly, five to one, only a year ago last spring, 
 for municipal ownership. (Applause.) Every one of 
 the members of that Council have been instructed by 
 their constituents to vote for municipal ownership, and 
 yet that Council has been working for months to give a 
 franchise to the Chicago City Railway Company, and has 
 not spent one hour toward trying to get municipal owner¬ 
 ship, not an hour in obeying the instructions of the people 
 of this city. What is the matter, do you suppose? (Cries 
 “No money in it.”) What is the matter with them? 
 (Cries “No money in it.”) Ah, my friends, we want 
 to let them know that the working men and women of 
 Chicago made Chicago. The working men of Chicago 
 can compel that Council to obey the voice of the people 
 of Chicago (cries “We will do it”)—and if they do not 
 do it we will do like they do down in St. Louis. We will 
 begin to “investigate” after awhile, and some of these 
 fellows will tell on some of the other fellows; there are 
 always “squeelers” among rogues—you never knew it 
 to fail—and when they begin to “squeel” it will be a 
 a contest as to which one will get to “squeel” first. The 
 first thing you know they will all want to “squeel,” and 
 then you will see some of them getting out of the United 
 States of America just as quick as they can, in order to 
 keep out of the penitentiary of the State of Illinois. 
 (Loud applause.) That is what will happen, gentlemen. 
 
13 
 
 This whole matter is in your hands—it is in the hands of 
 the people of the City of Chicago. 
 
 What do yon suppose will happen if you let this ordi¬ 
 nance pass, and give the Chicago City Railway Company 
 another franchise, and then give the Union Traction 
 Company another franchise? (Cries “We won’t do it.”) 
 Will you do that? (Cries “No, no.”) What will hap¬ 
 pen to the street car men then? (Cries “Slavery.”) If 
 they will be so arrogant, so inhuman, so insolent as they 
 have been thus far, what will they be then? Ah, my 
 countrymen, the time, the opportunity is now. You 
 must sign these Referendum petitions. See to it that all 
 your voters in every Local sign that petition. Then see 
 that that petition is sent up to the City Council. Then 
 go to the City Council yourselves and see that the voice 
 of that petition is heard, and see that it is obeyed. I 
 want to tell you that no man is brave enough to stand 
 against the voice of the united working men of the City 
 of Chicago. (Loud applause.) I care not what influ¬ 
 ence street railway companies may have. Those men 
 know that the voice of the people is the voice of God, 
 and they will be getting down on their knees and hum¬ 
 bly obeying it if you make it loud enough and unanimous 
 enough. 
 
 This is a fight for humanity. It is the fight of the 
 common people against a few big corporations. Through 
 your laws they were made. They could not exist for a 
 day but for you. They were created under laws made by 
 representatives of the people. The people’s servants are 
 bound to obey the people if the people but speak loud 
 enough and strong enough. 
 
 I am glad to see so many of you here this afternoon. 
 I know that the working men of this city are awake upon 
 a public question as they have not been awake before. 
 I am glad to know that there is no city in the world 
 
14 
 
 where the working men stand together as unitedly as 
 they do in the City of Chicago. (Applause.) I am 
 glad to know that there is no city in the world where the 
 working men are more intelligent, honest, faithful and 
 conscientious than in Chicago. (Applause.) I am glad 
 to know that the working men of Chicago have made up 
 their minds that the streets of Chicago and the City of 
 Chicago and the officials of Chicago belong to them, 
 because they are the people. (Loud and continued ap¬ 
 plause.) If you will stand together you will get all you 
 want. Let no man complain about the government— 
 you have it in your power to make it what you want it 
 to be. You could not have a more powerful weapon 
 than the ballot—and when the right time comes you 
 want to see to it that those servants who have proved 
 recreant to their trusts are made servants no longer, and 
 you want to see that men are placed in public position 
 that represent you, represent your voice and your honest 
 convictions. When that time comes you will find that 
 you have at last a government “of the people, by the 
 people, for the people,” in splendid reality. (Applause.) 
 
 Just a moment more and I shall close. One of the 
 truest friends of the laboring cause was Henry D. Lloyd. 
 He was one of the grandest men this or any other coun¬ 
 try ever knew. He braved obloquy and adverse criti¬ 
 cism, to write and speak for the cause of laboring men. 
 The last days of his life were spent in your cause, in 
 Chicago’s cause, in the cause of the public ownership 
 of street railways in Chicago. He gave his life for that 
 cause, and next Sunday afternoon a memorial service to 
 his memory will be held at the Auditorium. Attend it, 
 and show that you appreciate, respect and honor a man 
 who was ready to die for the cause of the common peo¬ 
 ple. (Great applause.) 
 
i5 
 
 Mr. Lloyd also wrote a little pamphlet on the street 
 railway question here in Chicago; it sells for five cents 
 —not enough to pay for the printing. See that you have 
 one of those and circulate it among your neighbors, and 
 in a short time there will not be an intelligent man or 
 woman in the City of Chicago who is not in favor of 
 municipal ownership, except it be “widows and orphans” 
 —such as Mr. Field and Mr. Leiter, who own stock in 
 street railways. (Applause.) 
 
 I am proud of the laboring people of Chicago; I am 
 proud of Chciago; and it is now in your hands to make 
 Chicago lead the world. Let Chicago have municipal 
 ownership of street railways; let the City Council grant 
 no more franchises to any private corporation to render 
 public service, and you will find that the other cities of 
 America—in the course of time, even lazy, corrupt old 
 Philadelphia—will have municipal ownership, too. (Loud 
 and continued applause.) 
 
 As I said, Chicago has given to the world some grand 
 men—she gave Lincoln, and she gave Lyman Trumbull, 
 the man whose right hand wrote the Thirteenth Amend¬ 
 ment to the Constitution of the United States, that abol¬ 
 ished slavery—and she gave others. She has done some 
 grand things, too (applause), and is destined yet to 
 do some grander ones. By and through her honest, in¬ 
 telligent citizenship, chiefest among them being her 
 working men and women, Chicago is soon to escape the 
 thraldom of public service corporations and to lead the 
 way among the cities of America in their march to the 
 public ownership of all public utilities. (Great ap¬ 
 plause.) 
 
16 
 
 ADDRESS OF WILLIAM PRENTISS BEFORE 
 THE TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE OF 
 THE CITY COUNCIL, CHICAGO, DECEMBER 
 7TH, 1903. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Gentlemen of the Committee, Ladies and 
 Gentlemen: 
 
 I dislike very much to offer an apology at any time, 
 much more so on occasions such as this; but, as perhaps 
 some of you know, some of us have been engaged very 
 busily for a number of weeks past in a matter that af¬ 
 fected the entire community, more or less, and particu¬ 
 larly the entire south side of the city, and as a consider¬ 
 able part of that labor fell upon me during that time, I 
 find myself sick. I am only here today because I felt 
 as though we ought at the earliest possible moment to 
 accept the invitation of this Committee to be heard. 
 
 I am here to represent in part the Federation of La¬ 
 bor, the Municipal Ownership Delegate Convention and 
 a number of other organizations and associations of citi¬ 
 zens who have deep convictions and deep feelings upon 
 these present questions. These are not public servants. 
 They receive no salaries or pay from the public. They 
 are not able to employ counsel. They are simply citi¬ 
 zens, people like myself and yourselves in your individual 
 capacity, not in your official capacity. They come 
 here at their own expense, taking their own time, not be¬ 
 cause they are men and women of leisure, for they are 
 not; they are wage earners. I come here as their repre¬ 
 sentative as well as in my own personal capacity, not for 
 a fee, for there is none. 
 
 We simply come here to present to our representa- 
 
n 
 
 tives our ideas and beliefs upon this question. We fore¬ 
 go our personal comfort, our personal duties, and let go 
 for the present the compensation and pay which we would 
 receive if engaged in our regular callings. We do it be¬ 
 cause we believe that the present question is a vital ques¬ 
 tion and that the present time is a vital time. We be¬ 
 lieve that a crisis is upon the people of the City of Chi¬ 
 cago, not merely for those who are living here today, but 
 for those who are to follow us, for our children and our 
 grandchild, and for the descendants of these for ages to 
 come. We believe that Chicago now has such an oppor¬ 
 tunity as she will not be likely to get again during the 
 present generation at least. What may happen in the 
 next generation we cannot tell. We have nothing to do 
 with that. We have to do with the present, and all we 
 desire is to perform our duties as citizens thoroughly 
 and well. 
 
 That there is an overwhelming sentiment in this com¬ 
 munity for the public (or municipal) ownership of street 
 railways there can be no question. Those who believed 
 in municipal ownership a year ago last Spring went to 
 work—at their own expense—and obtained a petition of 
 over 100,000 legal voters in this city asking that the 
 question might be submitted to the people of this com¬ 
 munity in order that they might say whether or not they 
 wanted municipal ownership of street railroads in this 
 city. I need not tell you what that vote was. You all 
 know it. You know that every precinct, every ward, of 
 this city voted for municipal ownership; not a single 
 voting precinct in the entire City of Chicago voted 
 against it. The vote in favor of that proposition was 
 nearly as large as was the vote for the successful candi¬ 
 date for mayor in this city each time that he was a can¬ 
 didate. I venture to say that never in the history of this 
 
i8 
 
 il 
 
 country, or in any other country, has such an overwhelm¬ 
 ing sentiment been expressed by the people upon any 
 public question as that. 
 
 Now, why were the people of Chicago so overwhelm¬ 
 ingly in favor of public ownership of street railways in 
 this city? And I ask that question of any gentleman on 
 this Committee. And I ask that question of any of the 
 well informed citizens of the City of Chicago. Why was 
 there such a sentiment in favor of public ownership? 
 There can be no doubt but that came about from a deep- 
 seated cause. There was a reason for it, and that reason 
 was that private ownership had proved a failure; that 
 the street car companies in the City of Chicago had not 
 furnished satisfactory service to the people of this city; 
 that the experience of the people of this community was 
 such that they felt an overwhelming inclination to rid 
 themselves and the community of private ownership of 
 street car lines in this city; to rid themselves not merely 
 of the present companies, but of any company, because 
 they felt that service would not be rendered properly by 
 any other power except by the people themselves. 
 
 It was like a case where a man had been hiring some¬ 
 body to perform his duties, to render services for him, 
 and found that it had been a failure, found that he had 
 not been served, found that somebody else had been 
 served and found that if he would get proper service he 
 must render it himself. Does this community, or any¬ 
 body, wish better or stronger evidence than this of the 
 fact that the street car service in this city has, up to 
 the present time, been entirely unsatisfactory to this com¬ 
 munity? Can there be any other reason for this over¬ 
 whelming sentiment on the part of the people to banish 
 the present representatives of the people, so far as that 
 service is concerned, and assume and perform that serv- 
 
19 
 
 » \ - 
 
 i . * ■ 
 
 i r a 
 
 ice for themselves? Now why is this? Why is it that 
 the people of the city feel so deeply on this question? 
 Let us go back, retrospect a little and see what the peo¬ 
 ple of the City of Chicago have received from these pri¬ 
 vate corporations that have been running our street cars. 
 
 In 1858 or '59 the first street car company in Chicago 
 was formed. Its capital was $100,000. It had 25 horses 
 and 4 cars. Its road in the beginning was a mile long. 
 It was called the Chicago City Railway Company. From 
 that original capital of $100,000 that company became 
 the richest street railroad corporation in the world. And 
 where did the money come from? It came out of the 
 people of this city. 
 
 No doubt you gentlemen who have been in the coun¬ 
 cil for a long time have been studying this question, and 
 no doubt you have read the report of the civic federation 
 of this city made in 1901. Those gentlemen were not 
 believers in municipal ownership; those gentlemen were 
 not radicals, as you may say, upon that question. They 
 were not men who were hostile to capital or hostile to 
 public service corporations, but they were conservative 
 business men of this city. And what do they tell you in 
 that report? You have read there, or can read there, in 
 large part the history of the street railways of the City 
 of Chicago up to that time. We also find from other 
 sources that scarcely had the Chicago City Railway 
 Company received its first charter and its first franchise 
 when it began to prove false to the authority that created 
 it and gave it all its power and privileges. It was to ren¬ 
 der service for a five-cent fare, from the south side to the 
 west side; but very soon afterwards it sold its west side 
 privileges for more than its original expenditure for the 
 whole concern, and after that persons who wanted to go 
 from the south side to the west side had to pay two fares 
 instead of one as originally. And then what did it do? 
 
20 
 
 When the people of the City of Chicago were resting se¬ 
 cure, after they had given this corporation, up to that time 
 everything it had asked, it went straight down to the 
 legislature of the state. They did not go to the Common 
 Council—the company had then used six years only of 
 the privileges that had been granted it—but it went to 
 the state legislature without consulting the people of the 
 City of Chicago, and it undertook to perpetuate its pow¬ 
 ers and its privileges for nearly a hundred years. Did 
 the citizens of this city desire that? 
 
 Some of you may know, or at least have read the his¬ 
 tory of that transaction, and if you have, you know this: 
 That the citizenship of Chicago protested against it; 
 that when they learned what was doing they held public 
 meetings. The “99-year” act had already passed one 
 branch of the legislature. Committees then went down 
 to Springfield to prevent its passing through the other 
 branch, but they were unable to defeat it. It passed. 
 Then they went to the governor of the state, Richard J. 
 Oglesby, and asked him to veto it, and prevent that out¬ 
 rage upon the people of Chicago, and he did veto it. He 
 gave reasons that would appeal to any man of judgment 
 or honor. But it passed through the legislature of the 
 State of Illinois by a two-third majority, against the pro¬ 
 test, against the honest efforts of the people of the City 
 of Chicago. 
 
 That was this same Chicago City Railway Company 
 that did that. What was it that induced the legislature 
 of the State of Illinois to betray the citizenship of Chi¬ 
 cago? Not only those who were alive, but to betray 
 generations unborn? Need I tell you, gentlemen, what 
 it was? You know what it was. The whole community 
 at the time knew what it was. You know that the repre¬ 
 sentatives of the people in the legislature did not do that 
 
21 
 
 without a consideration, and you know that consideration 
 was foul and criminal. 
 
 But notwithstanding that, in 1883 this City Railway 
 Company got another franchise. In the meantime, other 
 street railway corporations had been born and had grown 
 up in this city. They would go to the legislature when it 
 suited them, and go to the council when it suited them. 
 You remember the legislature that was elected in 1894; 
 you remember that these companies went to that legisla¬ 
 ture, these same street car companies that are now ask¬ 
 ing favors of the City of Chicago; and you know that 
 they got through that legislature, both branches of it, a 
 measure that paid no regard to the people of this city or 
 the City Council. They got direct through the legisla¬ 
 ture a law that gave them privileges that were worth un¬ 
 told millions of dollars. 
 
 And you know that this was prevented from becoming 
 the law of the State by one man, and that man was Gov¬ 
 ernor John P. Altgeld. (Great applause.) 
 
 You know that they went back to the next legislature, 
 the one that was elected in 1896. The people at that 
 time paid little attention to the personnel of the legislators 
 upon the traction question. There were other important 
 questions to be considered. Not a man, perhaps, was 
 elected to the legislature upon the issue of the street car 
 question. But the same influences went down there to 
 Springfield as before, and the so-called “Humphrey bilP’ 
 was proposed, which extended practically all of these 
 franchises in this city for fifty years. No citizen of Chi¬ 
 cago was consulted; neither the Mayor nor the City 
 Council was consulted. But the people in this commu¬ 
 nity, practically all classes, arose and said “No, that is 
 an outrage, and we will not permit it." The City Council, 
 the Mayor, the best citizenship of this city, without re- 
 
gard to occupation or party affiliation, went down to 
 Springfield, or sent delegations down to Springfield, and 
 they prevented the passage of the “Humphrey bill.” 
 
 But no sooner was that out of the way than the same 
 powers were there with another bill known as the Allen 
 law. The people protested against it. Telegrams were 
 sent against it. The people did all they could in the few 
 days they had after they learned what was going on be¬ 
 fore the bill was put through the legislature. And you 
 gentlemen know, and every citizen of Chicago knows, 
 how it was put through. You know that representatives 
 of the people were corrupted, and you know that it has 
 been a stigma upon every member of the legislature from 
 that hour to this that cast his vote for the so-called 
 Allen bill. Why was this done? It was done to prevent 
 the people of the City of Chicago from passing upon 
 these questions. They sought first to ignore the people 
 of Chicago, to ignore the Mayor and Council of the City 
 of Chicago, and it was the efforts of the citizenship of 
 this city, backed by most of the press of this city, that 
 finally brought about the repeal of the Allen law before 
 any great amount of mischief was done under it. The 
 council refused to act under it at all. 
 
 These are the companies that now are coming to this 
 council and asking for further privileges and favors. 
 You know that we have been having for years ex¬ 
 tremely poor street car service. You must know, I am 
 very sure the people whom I represent here to-day know, 
 that there has been scarcely a measure passed by this 
 City Council for the protection of the citizenship of this 
 city, to compel these corporations to perform their du¬ 
 ties to the public, that has not been ignored by the com¬ 
 panies as long as they could ignore it, and when they were 
 forced by the process of the law to obey, they still re- 
 
23 
 
 fused compliance and compelled the people of this com¬ 
 munity, through their officials, to go to the highest 
 courts in the state to have their laws and their ordinances 
 obeyed. 
 
 Let me remind you of a little matter that occurred re¬ 
 cently. A number of years ago the City Council passed 
 an ordinance providing and requiring these street car 
 companies to give certain transfers. You remember that 
 passengers were charged two fares to go from the central 
 part of the city on the north side to Rogers Park, 
 where I live, and such was the case in other parts of the 
 city. The ordinance was passed regulating this, but there 
 was no effort to enforce it until after a considerable 
 length of time. Finally the people out in Austin, to 
 whom it applied as well as the north part of the city, took 
 up the matter and they began to prosecute the Chicago 
 Union Traction Company for violating that ordinance 
 and not giving these transfers that ordinance required. 
 And you remember what happened when the Company 
 was sued by the City for a violation of that ordinance. 
 You know what was done with juries. You know that 
 attorneys for the Company, a number of them, were ar¬ 
 rested for bribing the juries, some of them even pleaded 
 guilty to that charge, and other were convicted; that the 
 juries were bribed there is no question in the minds of 
 the people of this community. I remember that after 
 Judge Ball had rendered his decision holding that the 
 ordinance was valid and binding and that the Council had 
 a right to pass it, they still refused to obey it or allow it 
 to be enforced. That was true on the south side as well 
 as on the north side. 
 
 While the matter was pending in the Supreme Court, 
 from time to time,. I saw personally the conduct of the 
 North Side Company. Night after night when I went 
 
24 
 
 to my home, after I passed Graceland avenue I was 
 asked for another fare, but being a pretty good sized man 
 and not accustomed to being robbed or bulldozed, I re¬ 
 fused. They didn’t attempt to put me off the car; but I 
 saw women and little girls and weak or uninformed men 
 compelled to pay a second fare. That was done over and 
 over again, day after day. Thousands of dollars were 
 taken in that way out of the people of that part of the 
 city alone. The street car boys didn’t want to do it. I 
 know how thev felt about it because I talked with some 
 of them about it. They said: 
 
 “We wouldn’t do this if we could help it, but our posi¬ 
 tions depend upon our doing it.” I said to them a number 
 of times: 
 
 “Don’t you know that this is contrary to an ordinance 
 of the City of Chicago that has been upheld by Judge 
 Ball and, in my judgment, will be upheld by the Supreme 
 Court of the State?” 
 
 They said, “It makes no difference; we are ordered to 
 collect these fares or threaten to put them off; we must 
 not put anybody off by force—that might involve the 
 company in trouble or expense, but if we can get the peo¬ 
 ple to pay it by threats and intimidation, we are in¬ 
 structed to take the money.” And they did it. 
 
 The same thing was done on the south side (I am in¬ 
 formed) by the Chicago City Railway, and, I repeat, 
 thousands of dollars were taken out of poor girls and 
 boys and men and women and put into the pockets of 
 these street railway companies of this city in violation of 
 the law. Had these nickels been taken in this way by a 
 highwayman upon the street, the law would have come 
 in and the public officials would have said, “That is high¬ 
 way robbery; we will send the scoundrels to the peniten¬ 
 tiary.” 
 
25 
 
 f 
 
 That transfer case went to the Supreme Court of the 
 state; it was decided in favor of the ordinance. Judge 
 Ball was upheld. But have you ever heard of the City 
 Railway or the Union Traction Company, or the Consol¬ 
 idated Traction Company, returning the thousands of 
 dollars to the people of this city that they took out of 
 them by this intimidation and outrage? Do you won¬ 
 der that the people of the City of Chicago became tired, 
 became incensed, became indignant, and said: 
 
 “We owe these street car companies nothing; they 
 have betrayed us from the time of their inception to this 
 hour; the are corporations created to get money for div¬ 
 idends to stockholders. 
 
 “That is what they are for. That is their purpose and 
 their aim and they respect nothing else and regard noth¬ 
 ing else ; we cannot trust these street car companies nor 
 trust any other; we want to do our business for our¬ 
 selves/’ (Applause.) 
 
 Some of you gentlemen are business men. You have 
 had occasion and doubtless will have occasion in the 
 future to employ people to do work for you, to represent 
 you. What would you think if your agent, or your repre¬ 
 sentative, would conduct your business and would serve 
 you as these street car companies have served the people 
 of the City of Chicago ? There is not a man among you 
 that would stand it for an hour, if you knew it. You 
 would kick him out of your employ, and if you could get 
 the evidence you would send him to the penitentiary 
 where he belonged. But suppose he should say, “Please 
 hire me over again ; give me a new chance; perhaps I 
 will do better in the future.” Would you do it? If you 
 did do it, you would expect to be sent very shortly either 
 to the insane asylum of the state or to a school for the 
 committee, or at least a sub-feeble minded. And yet this 
 committee of it, seems to be seriously considering the 
 
26 
 
 question of giving to the Chicago City Railway a fran¬ 
 chise for twenty years more. 
 
 Now these are some reasons why the people of this 
 city are asking for municipal ownership. Don’t you think 
 they ought to try to get it? 
 
 Did you ever in your lives hear of a wrong without a 
 remedy? If you will read the history of this country, 
 or if you will read the history of any other country, 
 when the people—or some of them—were seeking to 
 better the condition of the community, and seeking to 
 right some wrong that the people had been suffering, 
 some people would always say: “We can’t do it; we 
 have to submit.” All along the ages the same kind of 
 argument has been brought forth by some of the peo¬ 
 ple. But there always have been a few, very nearly al¬ 
 ways, at first called “impractical,” sometimes they were 
 called “agitators,” and sometimes called “wild-eyed,” and 
 other names of that kind. But these have said, “Where 
 there is a wrong there should be a remedy, and it is the 
 duty of every good citizen to seek out and find that rem¬ 
 edy.” 
 
 Why, I remember—and I am not an old man, at least 
 I don’t feel old—when I was a little boy, along about 
 1859 I was living in a little town in this state where my 
 father died in 1854, and my mother said to me one Sun¬ 
 day, “I want you to go with me to the Presbyterian 
 Church today to hear the sermon of a minister.” She 
 was a Methodist, and as a rule went to that church. The 
 reason she wanted to go to the Presbyterian was that the 
 minister was going to preach a sermon on the subject of 
 slavery and she wanted to hear what he had to say. 
 There were a good many abolitionists in that little town 
 who believed slavery was wrong, believing it was a 
 crime, a terrible sin, and the church was crowded with 
 people. 
 
27 
 
 I remember that minister well, and he was not a bad 
 man, either; he was really a good man at heart, an hon- 
 nest, upright man. He opened the lids of the Bible and 
 he read several texts and he preached his sermon. I 
 cannot remember the details of it; my mind was too 
 young to grasp all that he said; but I remember this: 
 That he absolutely proved by scripture that slavery was 
 right; he absolutely proved that because it was right 
 it would exist forever and, he said, “there was no use 
 preaching against it, no use fighting against it, because 
 it could not be helped: it was one of the things that we 
 had to endure and had to bear.” And I saw a gray-haired 
 and gray-whiskered old man get up in that audience; he 
 was not a preacher, he was simply a citizen, a member of 
 the church. He said, in substance: 
 
 “I want to protest against what you have uttered; 
 God never made any such statement as you say. Slav¬ 
 ery is a curse and an evil, and God Almighty in His own 
 good time will wipe it out.” 
 
 But the preacher silenced him and let him say no more. 
 That was in 1859. The next year Abraham Lincoln was 
 elected President of the United States and long before 
 his first term had expired he wrote the Emancipation 
 Proclamation. And a little time later Lyman Trumbull, 
 one of our citizens of Chicago, with his own right hand 
 wrote the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of 
 the United States that abolished slavery forever. (Ap¬ 
 plause.) 
 
 Ah, gentlemen! I undertake to say that where there is 
 a wrong there is a remedy. 
 
 Now will anybody question what I have said in re¬ 
 gard to the conduct of these street car companies? Will 
 anybody question but what they ought to be gotten rid 
 of if we can possibly do E? Will anybody uphold them 
 
28 
 
 in their nefarious work? I would like to see the man 
 who could stand up before an audience in Chicago and 
 say of the Chicago City Railway Company or of the 
 Chicago Union Traction Company, “Well done, thou 
 good and faithful servant.” (Great laughter and ap¬ 
 plause. ) 
 
 You know they have betrayed every trust, and you 
 know that we have been during these years practically in 
 the hands of freebooters. If this work had been done 
 by individuals instead of by corporations all would con¬ 
 cede their place to be in the penitentiary of the state. 
 They have committed crimes enough to keep them there 
 a natural human lifetime. 
 
 And yet it is said, “We cannot help it—we have got to 
 have them.” Now, there are some of us who do not be¬ 
 lieve that. You heard Mr. Bonney this morning, and he 
 talked in detail of temporary relief by simply licensing 
 the roads and of compelling good service. Any lawyer 
 knows—and I observe a number of lawyers on this com¬ 
 mittee—that under the police powers of Chicago they 
 can be compelled to render good service; that they can 
 be licensed and that they can be compelled to perform 
 their duty as licensees and the service of this city greatly 
 improved if the City of Chicago sees fit to exercise the 
 power it possesses. 
 
 Now, in deference to this sentiment of the people ex¬ 
 pressed a year ago last April there was a cry for a Muni¬ 
 cipal Ownership Enabling Act. It was said by this city, 
 and the Mayor and the Council of this city, “We must 
 have an Enabling Act.” The Mayor said over and over 
 again that he would not consider any franchise, as far as 
 he was concerned, until they did have such an Enabling 
 Act. I believe a bill was prepared and proposed in the 
 Council by Alderman Finn. Another was prepared by 
 
2 9 
 
 Alderman Jackson; such an act as the Council, or at 
 least those gentlemen, believed would be sufficient to 
 bring about municipal ownership in the City of Chi¬ 
 cago; that, at least, would enable the people of Chi¬ 
 cago to get municipal ownership if they should desire it. 
 
 But finally a measure was introduced in the legislature 
 by Mr. Carl Mueller, a state senator on the north side. 
 I was for a time a constituent of Senator Mueller. I 
 never heard that he was particularly a friend of munici¬ 
 pal ownership. But the bill that he offered in the senate 
 was endorsed by a good many people in this community. 
 It is said to have been written by a gentleman connected 
 with the Municipal Voters’ League. How that is, I do 
 not know. But I know this, and it has been already told 
 you today, that the Mayor of the city endorsed that 
 measure. I believe I am correct in stating that the City 
 Council endorsed it. I know I am correct in stating 
 that a number of gentlemen on this committee endorsed 
 it and that other people and distinguished members of 
 the City Council endorsed it as a Municipal Ownership 
 Enabling Act. 
 
 Now I know some people make mistakes. We are all 
 liable to. It may be that you gentlemen, or those of you 
 who endorsed that as a Municipal Ownership Enabling 
 Act, were mistaken. It may be that measure is not 
 in every respect what it might have been. But it 
 did receive the endorsement of the legislative and 
 executive departments of this city, and through the in¬ 
 fluence of the City Council and the Mayor, and such men 
 as Mr. Graeme Stewart and other citizens, the legisla¬ 
 ture of the state was induced to pass it. So far as I am 
 concerned, it seems clear to me that if the proper effort 
 is put forth, municipal ownership can be gotten out of 
 that Mueller law. I do think that it could have been im¬ 
 proved ; I think it could have been made better, but per- 
 
30 
 
 baps I am mistaken. Any measure that the legislature 
 might pass would have been contested in the courts. 
 There is no doubt about that. These street car compa¬ 
 nies will not let go any of their privileges or rights, or 
 asserted rights, without a contest. Any measure that 
 pointed to municipal ownership, or was thought to be of 
 such a character as could bring it about, would have been 
 opposed by these same men and companies. They would 
 fight it in the courts. They will contest it to the very last 
 ditch; and any measure that could have been prepared 
 or proposed would have been compelled to run the 
 gauntlet of their opposition and their hostility. 
 
 But certainly this Council has no right to question 
 that measure. The Mayor of this city has no right to 
 question that measure. They said that it was a Municipal 
 Ownership Enabling Act such as we wanted, and it is 
 their bounden duty, not only to the people of the City of 
 Chicago who want municipal ownership and expressed it 
 in the most positive way, but it is their duty to them¬ 
 selves. They owe it to their own reputations, to go to 
 work, persistently, energetically and intelligently, to get 
 municipal ownership out of it. 
 
 Did you ask for the Mueller bill for the benefit of the 
 next generation? Did you offer this measure to the 
 Mayor and Council that is to be twenty years hence? 
 Was it that? If you were unable to devise a law that you 
 yourselves could use to bring about municipal ownership, 
 what sort of right had you to assume to produce one for 
 the next generation? (Applause.) 
 
 Now, what has been done toward bringing about mun¬ 
 icipal ownership? What has been done by the City 
 Council, or this honorable committee, looking toward 
 municipal ownership, toward bringing it about? To be 
 sure, we don’t know how extensive the investigations of 
 this committee, or of the sub-committee, have been. The 
 
3 1 
 
 people of this community don’t know what has passed in 
 the negotiations between this committee and representa¬ 
 tives of the Chicago City Railway. They assume, of 
 course, that everything has been right and proper, and I 
 am not here to question that. But the arguments pro 
 and con, the discussions between the members upon the 
 question of municipal ownership, if there have been any, 
 we know nothing about. They have not been printed in 
 the papers and no citizen that I have ever heard of, who 
 was not a member or an officer of the committee, or an 
 employe of the committee, or a representative of the 
 Chicago City Railway Company, knows anything about 
 what they were. Don’t understand me in any way to 
 reflect upon the committee, but I simply call your atten¬ 
 tion to this: That whatever effort has been made in the 
 way of research, in the way of investigation, in the way 
 of study, in the way of argument, upon that question is a 
 profound secret to the people of Chicago today. 
 
 Whether these gentlemen believe in municipal owner¬ 
 ship or not, I do not know; but certainly they do not be¬ 
 lieve in it in the way that some of us believe in it. How 
 do you expect that anybody will ever get anything un¬ 
 less they try for it? That is one of the first lessons my 
 mother taught me. When I told her that my lesson was 
 hard, she said, “Try, my boy; try; study,” and she 
 handed to me a little poem that was printed in a little 
 school book. It said : 
 
 “Try, try, again; 
 
 If at first you don't succeed, 
 
 Try, try, again.” 
 
 She told me that really there was no such word as fail 
 in any laudable undertaking or in any honorable under¬ 
 taking. Suppose I had said, “Oh, mother, I can’t; I 
 can’t get it (I was a rather dull pupil). I can't get 
 this arithmetic lesson, I can’t get his reading lesson, I 
 
32 
 
 can’t get this grammar lesson.” What do yon suppose 
 would have become of me? Now if that is a good les¬ 
 son for a pupil is it not a good one for a people, for any 
 one in a community who desires to accomplish anything? 
 Don’t you think it is worthy of imitation on the part of 
 the representatives of the people in a great city like Chi¬ 
 cago? Now you gentlemen may have tried, but if you 
 have, the citizens of Chicago know nothing about it. So 
 far as I have ever been able to learn, it has been assumed 
 that 3^ou could not do it, and therefore you could not. 
 The people of Chicago voted for it overwhelmingly— 
 more than five to one. You recommended a law to the 
 legislature of the state which you said would bring about 
 municipal ownership, and though that legislature passed 
 it a long time ago, there hasn’t anything been done that 
 T have heard of by the City Council of this city to indi¬ 
 cate that any effort ever has been made to bring about, 
 municipal ownership sooner than twenty years from 
 now. 
 
 Now this is a strange situation. Are you going to 
 say to the people, are you going to say to the repre¬ 
 sentatives of the laboring people of Chicago, to the rep¬ 
 resentatives of the Municipal Ownership Delegate Con¬ 
 vention of Chicago, and these other societies, are you go¬ 
 ing to say to the nearly 150,000 people who voted for 
 Municipal Ownership, “Come and tell us how to get it; 
 you come and tell us how to get it.” Why should we 
 tell the City Council how to get municipal ownership? 
 (Applause.) We are simply people; we earn our bread 
 by the sweat of our faces; we are not salaried and paid 
 by this municipality. We have no more or greater duty 
 to perform than the humblest citizen of the city. As I 
 said a while ago, we have taken our time and put forth 
 our efforts to do what we can to help bring about muni¬ 
 cipal ownership. 
 
33 
 
 But, gentlemen, the City Council of the City of Chi¬ 
 cago are our representatives. The Mayor of the City of 
 Chicago is our representative. They are paid annually 
 considerably more than $100,000 to serve the people of 
 this community. They are supposed to be learned in 
 municipal affairs. They are supposed to have at heart 
 the well being of the community. They are paid for 
 their time. Not only that, it is the duty of the city gov¬ 
 ernment, the Mayor and Council, to do what they can for 
 the community, but they have a legal department, too, 
 paid by this community. Not only have they a regu¬ 
 lar legal department, but they have employed special 
 counsel, able lawyers, men learned in the law, paid big 
 fees, no doubt, as they should be (no lawyer is going to 
 kick on another lawyer’s fees). (Laughter.) 
 
 But if these attorneys who have been employed spe¬ 
 cially have ever put in a single hour in trying to devise 
 ways and means to bring about municipal ownership in 
 the City of Chicago, I have never heard of it. (Ap¬ 
 plause.) Those gentlemen are not paid by the Chicago 
 City Railway Company except as that railway company 
 pays taxes, and nobody has ever accused it of paying any 
 more taxes than it ought to have paid, and the Supreme 
 Court of this state has said, in effect, that they have paid 
 much less than one-tenth of what they ought to have 
 paid during the last twenty years. It is the people who 
 pay these officials and attorneys, and pay them to serve 
 them. Now those gentlemen by simply saying, “We can¬ 
 not have it,” and this honorable committee and the City 
 Council by saying, “Our attorneys tell us that we can¬ 
 not have it, therefore we cannot have it. And then to 
 come to us, come to the Federation of Labor, to the wage 
 earners of Chicago, come to lawyers like myself, who 
 have to earn every dollar they get, and by the hardest 
 knocks, and say, “You tell us how to get municipal own¬ 
 ership.” 
 
34 
 
 But this Council sub-committee has produced some¬ 
 thing. I have here in my hand something which we are 
 to discuss. It is an ordinance for the Chicago City Rail¬ 
 way Company—it looks very much like it was for the 
 Chicago City Railway Company. (Applause.) But I 
 am afraid it is not for the people. Now, I haven’t the 
 time to discuss that ordinance in detail. I haven’t even 
 had the time to read it with care. I read it, however, so 
 that I know substantially what it contains. And it seems 
 that these special attorneys and the whole legal depart¬ 
 ment of Chicago who have been called to assist in this 
 matter, together with this honorable committee, have 
 been able to produce just one thing. 
 
 They seem to have been studying all the time—instead 
 of studying Municipal Ownership —studying franchises. 
 They seem to have been thoroughly informed upon the 
 franchise question, and they have produced this. They 
 have either forgotten or they have ignored the entire his¬ 
 tory of the Chicago City Railway Company, or else they 
 never knew it. They seem to have forgotten that that 
 Railway Company, almost from the time it was created, 
 has failed to perform its duties to the citizenship of this 
 City. I will not repeat what I said as to some of the 
 things it did. But you gentlemen know, no doubt, that 
 it never has performed its duty to the people of this com¬ 
 munity in the way of paying taxes. 
 
 You know that this company, with twenty others of 
 the public service corporations of this city, have been 
 evading their just taxes for years, that they have had a 
 very powerful influence upon some of our public servants 
 down at Springfield, called the State Board of Equaliza¬ 
 tion, and that that board very kindly and generously al¬ 
 lowed them to escape paying the principal part of their 
 taxes. 
 
 Now I am not going to criticise harshly any of the 
 
35 
 
 ✓ 
 
 people of this city, but it does seem to me a little odd, as 
 it does to the people whom I represent here today, that 
 the richest corporations in this city should for years 
 have been able to escape their taxes, and that not until 
 the School Teachers of this City, and the women teach¬ 
 ers at that, who had no votes, had to take up that ques¬ 
 tion and did take it up. That at their own expense they 
 hired lawyers and went down before that Board of Equal¬ 
 ization, and there met face to face the representatives of 
 these great public service corporations, and finally by a 
 writ of mandamus from the Circuit Court compelled that 
 board to assess these corporations upon their franchises 
 and their capital stock. (Applause.) 
 
 Why, one gentleman said to me today, “We would like 
 to grant to the people of the City of Chicago municipal 
 ownership if we only had the money, but where are we 
 going to get the money?” You just study the history of 
 the public service corporations of this city a little and 
 the other big wealthy corporations of this city, and study 
 the way they have been evading their taxes during the 
 last twenty years, and you will find that if the public of¬ 
 ficials of the City of Chicago had done their duty and 
 had done the work that these school teachers of Chicago 
 did, you would have had a mighty full treasury. (Ap¬ 
 plause.) 
 
 We could have taken over these street car companies 
 without a word, and this excuse that we haven't got the 
 money would never have been heard. 
 
 I want to call your attention to another thing. We 
 have had an object lesson right in this city recently, the 
 weakness—not to say folly—of allowing the public serv¬ 
 ice of this city to be performed by a private corporation. 
 You have seen a strike of the street car men on the south 
 side. 
 
36 
 
 Now I hope that none oi you gentlemen will think 
 that because I have been one of the attorneys for the 
 strikers that 1 am prejudiced, for that reason, against 
 the Chicago City Railway Company. I am not. I think 
 the general conduct of the Chicago City Railway Com¬ 
 pany has been as good, but no better, than the conduct of 
 the other public service corporations in this city. They 
 have simply performed their duties when they could not 
 help it. (Laughter and applause.) And that is what 
 they have been doing all these years. We have seen the 
 whole south side of the city denied transportation. You 
 have seen one-half of the police force of this city used to 
 assist these people—the Chicago City Railway Company 
 —in running their cars. You have seen an Honorable 
 Committee of this Council and the Mayor work day and 
 night and beg the Chicago City Railway Company to set¬ 
 tle this strike peaceably. I will leave it to that commit¬ 
 tee themselves to say whether or not the men that went 
 before it, representing the employes of the company, 
 were not fair from start to finish, and were not ready 
 to do anything that was fair and honorable to settle that 
 strike. And who stood in the way of arbitration? The 
 men offered arbitration from the start, and when the 
 State Board of Arbitration intervened and said, “In the 
 name of the law and for the peace of the state, we want 
 you to settle this matter amicably,” the men said, “Yes, 
 we will,” but this corporation said “No, sir.” They 
 spurned every effort at conciliation and it was not until 
 the Mayor and City Council most persistently insisted 
 and demanded that it be settled peaceably that the com¬ 
 pany agreed to anything like fair terms. 
 
 If the Chicago City Railway Company would demean 
 itself before the people of this city, and before the Mayor 
 and the Council of this city in that way, at a time when 
 its franchise had expired, and when it was asking for a 
 
37 
 
 new one, what would it do if granted another twenty- 
 year franchise? (Applause.) 
 
 Now there is something here that I want to call your 
 attention to. In one of the schedules added to this ordi¬ 
 nance, on page 69, is just what the people of Chicago 
 must expect if this franchise is granted. Now this is the 
 statement of the company itself. It is its own idea of 
 what is going to happen in the future—if it gets a fran¬ 
 chise. It estimates an expenditure of $2,000,000 in twen¬ 
 ty years “To provide for strikes or avoidance of strikes," 
 averaging $100,000 a year on that account. It has figured 
 up every year what is likely to occur and it is likely to 
 expend. That is five per cent a year on a two million 
 dollar investment that the company itself estimates. They 
 estimate they will have to pay this out on account of 
 strikes. Do you wonder that the laboring people of Chi¬ 
 cago are a little bit leery about giving this company this 
 ordinance ? 
 
 I am not here to say that municipal ownership in 
 Chicago is an easy thing. It is not an easy thing. 
 Very few things that are important and very valuable 
 are easy to get. The Almighty did not put gold on trees 
 or scatter it along the highways. He put it in the rocks 
 and in the ravines and covered it up so that it is hard to 
 get. And so it is with everything that is valuable. You 
 have got to work for it. It takes skill, it takes labor, it 
 takes industry, it takes ingenuity, and it takes good old 
 fashioned honesty to get anything that is real good in 
 this world. And it takes that to bring about municipal 
 ownership. I repeat, I know it is hard to get municipal 
 ownership. It was hard to obtain American liberty. In 
 1775 and ’76 there were people who said, “We cannot 
 fight Great Britain, we cannot fight England, we have to 
 remain subjects,” but Patrick Henry said, “They tell us, 
 
/ 
 
 38 
 
 sir, that we are weak, unable to cope with so formidable 
 an adversary, but," he said, “when shall we be stronger? 
 Will it be the next week or the next year, or will it be 
 when the enemy has bound us hand and foot? Shall we 
 gather strength by irresolution and inaction?" “No," 
 he said, “thanks to God we are not weak," and he ap¬ 
 pealed to the God of battles, and his appeal was heard. 
 And this people, when only three million strong, went to 
 war and they fought eight long years for your liberty 
 and my liberty and the liberty of our children and their 
 descendants. Just so here. Are the people of Chicago 
 today free? Are they free when they have these public 
 service corporations on every hand, conducting them¬ 
 selves as I have shown you, and I haven’t shown you 
 half, what these street car companies have been doing. 
 The people made these corporations. They are our ozvn 
 corporations. And they have become so powerful, so 
 strong, so arrogant as to have us practically in their 
 grasp. Now is an opportunity to rid ourselves of some 
 of them, at least keep ourselves from longer remaining 
 in their power. Do you think it is a mistake on our part, 
 on the part of these laboring people of Chicago, to come 
 to you and ask you to do something now when it is prac¬ 
 ticable ? Do you wonder that they are surprised and mor¬ 
 tified that valuable months have been spent in producing 
 a document like that (referring to the printed ordinance) 
 for a street car company that has never respected your 
 wishes, nor the wishes of this community, or the laws of 
 the state or the laws of the city ? 
 
 Now I was going to read you something* from this 
 Mueller law, but I will not take the time to do it. You, 
 no doubt, have read that law—at least I presume so. I 
 don’t think a member of the City Council of Chicago 
 would endorse a measure that he had not read. (Ap¬ 
 plause.) 
 
39 
 
 f 
 
 I know it is not going to be an easy thing to get 
 municipal ownership out of that law or any other law 
 that the legislature might pass. 1 know that you will 
 meet obstacles on every hand. I know that you will 
 have the united opposition, not only of the street railway 
 corporations of this city, but of all the great public 
 service corporations of this city, of all the great public 
 service corporations of this country, yes, of all the great 
 public service corporations of Europe—they will all unite. 
 They have fastened themselves on the people; they have 
 grown enormously rich; they count their wealth by mil¬ 
 lions, yea, by billions; and they know how to use their 
 wealth. They believe themselves omnipotent. 
 
 I need not tell you gentlemen what these corporations 
 have done, for every well informed citizen in Chicago 
 knows what our own corporations have done. There is 
 much complaint about corruption in the nation, in the 
 State, in the counties, many of them, and in the cities of 
 this country. Who has been behind all this corruption? 
 Where did it come from ? Who is it that corrupts State 
 Boards of Equalization? Who it is that corrupts state 
 legislatures ? Who is it that wrongly influences city 
 councils in some places? It is these public service cor¬ 
 porations. They have the money. Think of it—the cor¬ 
 porations the people have made, take a little of the money 
 that they have gotten from the people, and then they cor¬ 
 rupt the servants of the people and continue their power 
 and increase their strength. If that is not bondage, what 
 is it? If that is not slavery, what is it? If that is not 
 something that every honest man ought to want to get rid 
 of, what in the name of heaven would he want to escape?* 
 
 I want to tell you, gentlemen, that this is a critical 
 period in the history of Chicago and in the history of 
 this country, for there is no city in America that is situ- 
 
40 
 
 ated like Chicago. Already across the seas, in monarch¬ 
 ies, in governments not of the people like ours, the 
 people are taking over to themselves these public service 
 corporations. 1 think it would do the membership of this 
 committee good to take a little trip across the briney 
 deep this winter. I think it would do my friend Aider- 
 man Mavor good to go back to his native heath, Scot¬ 
 land, and visit Glasgow and investigate how it was that 
 Glasgow was enabled to bring about municipal owner¬ 
 ship of her public utilities. And then visit Liverpool and 
 Leeds and see how they do it. Find out the obstacles 
 they had to overcome and how they overcame them. 
 You won't find that it was easy. Yet they ac¬ 
 complished it, and I think that what Scotland and 
 England, what Glasgow, Liverpool and Leeds can ac¬ 
 complish, the City of Chicago can accomplish. I don’t 
 think Chicago is willing to take second place to any 
 municipality on this earth. (Applause.) Did you ever 
 know Chicago to undertake in dead earnest to do any¬ 
 thing that she did not do? Do you suppose that in 1892, 
 and prior to that time, if the people of Chicago had said, 
 if the City Council and the Mayor and public citizens has 
 said, “YVe can‘t get the fair here, we can’t handle it,” 
 that we would ever have gotten the World’s Fair and 
 have shown to all the world the grandest, the most beauti¬ 
 ful spectacle that was ever produced for the eye of man? 
 
 Do you think that in 1871 when the city was burned, 
 when the heart was burnt out of it, if the people of Chi¬ 
 cago had said, “Oh, we cannot rebuild, we can’t do that,” 
 that Chicago ever would have been rebuilt and have be¬ 
 come the splendid city that she is ? 
 
 I want to tell you, my friends, that Chicago can have 
 municipal ownership. (Applause.) She can’t get it to¬ 
 morrow, she can't get it next week. She can’t get it next 
 
4i 
 
 year. She may not even have succeeded fully in getting 
 it within the next five years, but I want to say to you that 
 if she does not go to work, if our public officials, our 
 Mayor and our City Council do not go to work and try to 
 get it, she never zvill get it. That is certain. The matter 
 is in your hands absolutely. There never, in my judg¬ 
 ment. has come such an opportunity before to any body 
 of men on this earth as has come to the City Council of 
 the City of Chicago at this time. (Applause.) I want 
 to tell you that municipal ownership in the municipali¬ 
 ties of the United States is coming. Tt is going to come 
 because the people know what they want, because the 
 common people, and especialv the toilers of this coun¬ 
 try, know what they want. If some of the business men, 
 some of the “better citizens,” so called, have not been 
 studying this question and informing themselves upon 
 this question, the toilers of this country have been study¬ 
 ing it. They are the ones who have felt the strong arm 
 of these public service corporations. They know what 
 they are. They know their tyranny, thev know their in¬ 
 justice, they know they worship the God of money and 
 nothing else; that they respect neither man, woman nor 
 
 child. That all they want is money, and that they have 
 
 ~ * ~ 
 
 been grinding that out of the toilers of this country. 
 They have made up their minds that thev have suffered 
 long enough from these corporations. Thev say, “that 
 this is our country: this is a government of the people, 
 by the people and for the people—theoretically. We 
 have made up our minds that we are going to make it 
 such in fact” (Applause.) 
 
 The opportunity to lead the way has come to Chicago; 
 and is our City Council and our Mayor now going to 
 say, “We can’t do itf Are we going to surrender like 
 old Philadelphia, and let the public service corporations 
 run us?” If so, the next thing you will see will be that 
 
42 
 
 some corporation will come here and want to buy your 
 waterworks, and you will sell them. They will come 
 here and they will want to take away from you your elec¬ 
 tric lighting plant that you already have. They did that 
 with old Philadelphia, with regard to her gas works— 
 that once grand city, where* the cradle of liberty 
 was rocked. I tell you, my friends, you have a grand 
 opportunity. It is such an opportunity that will never 
 again in your lifetimes, in my judgment, come to a City 
 Council. I would like to be a member of this City Coun¬ 
 cil. Not that I am any wiser than any of you gentlemen, 
 not that I am anv more loval than anv of vou gentlemen. 
 But I would like to be a member of a body of public ser¬ 
 vants who had the intelligence, who had the honesty, who 
 had the opportunity and tenacity of purpose to serve the 
 people by establishing municipal ownership in the City of 
 Chicago. (Applause.) 
 
 I have made this talk under great difficulties. I have 
 not had the time to make the preparation to discuss this 
 ordinance in detail as much as I should like. I came 
 practically from a sick bed to talk here this afternoon 
 upon this subject. There is a great deal more to say, 
 but others are to follow. The other side of this question 
 is to be discussed, as I understand it, and I expect to ask 
 to be heard again before this debate closes. 
 
 In closing now I want to say that the Mayor and the 
 City Council of Chicago for the years 1903 and ’04 are 
 destined to immortality. Whatever your conduct shall 
 be it will immortalize the body that represents in the 
 Council at this time the people of Chicago-. Whether it 
 shall be immortal glory or not depends upon yon. 
 (Applause.)