gotiations before the Twelfth Street Traffic Way commission and of the proceedings in the houses of the council. It printed, without charge, announcements and notices of the work of the Committee of One Hundred, and gave public approval to all conspicuous features in the fight for a "Free City against the Franchise." Mr. Dante Barton and Mr. H. J. Haskell of the editorial staff having charge of such matters are, and for a long time have been, enthusiastic members of the National Municipal League, and the influence of its annual publications and findings, can be recognized in the columns of the Star.

Next to the Star as an influential institution in this fight was the City Club, which threw its full membership into the fight enthusiastically after being first aroused in a key-note speech by Frank P. Walsh, a prominent lawyer, an able orator and debater, who devoted substantially his whole time for the six weeks to work on the rostrum before crowded meetings all over the city. This club imported speakers almost weekly for its meetings during the campaign, among them Mayor Dunne and Raymond Robins of Chicago. Judge Scarritt and Hon. O. H. Dean, prominent Democrats, permitted their speeches to be printed and distributed by the Committee of 100 as an argument that the franchise was not real Democracy; and D. J. Haff, who has fought for public parks in Kansas City from their inception, and whose logical analysis, first used effectively at a tremendous stockyards meeting, was published as a campaign document, was a strong factor.

Certainly no summary of this matter would be complete without mentioning Charles Sumner, secretary of the City Club, and an active member of organized labor, who, as assistant secretary of the Committee of 100, had practical charge of all the details of the campaign. He was on duty fourteen hours a day for the full period of six weeks, refusing at the end to accept compensation for his services, though the Committee of 100 had agreed with him in advance to pay him for his help. When men not of large means will give their money and time at a sacrifice, for city service, that city is indeed far from graft or toleration of municipal robbery, whether in money, or contracts, or franchise grabs.

Since the defeat of the franchise, Mr. John M. Egan, a railroad contractor and manager of international reputation, formerly president of the Union Depot Terminal Company of this city during its negotiations for a new franchise, has been elected. president of the Street Railway Company, supplanting Mr. Corrigan, and seems inclined to do all in his power to show that the street railway company desires to give good service and satisfaction to patrons, and to get out of active politics. Over 600 men are now at work daily on street paving for the company, many new cars have been purchased and are running, and more are promised. The city has a good public utilities commission, consisting of three members appointed by the mayor, instead of seven as under the Crittenden regime. With Darius A. Brown, now mayor, who was one of the active anti-franchise fighters in the franchise campaign while a member of the lower house, the matter of Kansas City's street railway situation seems safe for the present.

The lesson of the Kansas City franchise fight is: Educate the citizen by making him take a hand in municipal matters at all times, and when crises come, he will be a better safeguard for his town against assault than the stone walls of ancient days.

Elements of A Constructive Franchise

Policy.

By DELOS F. WILCOX, Ph. D., NEW YORK CITY.

For the sake of simplicity and directness I shall confine myself in this discussion to street railway franchises. The principles suggested, however, will be applicable, with due allowance for modifying conditions, to franchises under which any local public utility is operated.

So far as the discussion of past and present franchise policies is concerned, I shall confine myself for the most part to the experience of New York City, for the double reason that I have a more intimate knowledge of franchise conditions there than elsewhere, and that the franchises of New York apply to public utility services of greater magnitude than are found in any other city of the United States.

The street railway franchise policy of New York City was inaugurated about sixty years ago by "The Forty Thieves," who

The Forty
Thieves

at that time controlled the destinies of New York by reason of membership in the board of aldermen and the board of assistants. In the first franchise, granted in 1851 to the Sixth and Eighth Avenue Railroad Companies, these gentlemen by mistake started right. They provided that the city should have the right to cause the companies' rails to be removed from the streets at any time, and furthermore, that the city should have the option of buying the companies' lines at any time upon payment of the cost of construction, plus a bonus of ten per cent. The city fathers' mistake in starting right was soon rectified, and the example set by "The Forty Thieves" in these original franchises was never followed by them or by their innumerable successors in the common council and the state legislature through whose liberality the metropolis of the American continent has been despoiled of the control of its streets.

It turned out that at the time these original franchises were granted, the City of New York did not possess lawful authority to grant street railway franchises. In 1854, after the local authorities had attempted to make grants to several companies for the construction of lines on the important north and south avenues of the city, the legislature passed a general act confirming these grants, and conferring upon cities of the state generally the right to grant street railway franchises subject to the consent of the majority in interest of the abutting property owners. Many years later, at a time when the Metropolitan Street Railway Company was gathering together all the competing lines of old New York into one gigantic monopoly, the Court of Appeals was called upon to determine the effect of the Act of 1854, confirmAct of 1854

ing the original grant to the Eighth Avenue Railroad Company. The court held substantially that what the Act of 1854 did was to confirm the privileges of the company and release it from its obligations. In this manner the judiciary effectively corrected the original aldermanic error of starting right. In 1860, however, a new act, applicable to New York City alone, was passed by which the legislature arrogated to itself the exclusive right to grant street railway franchises in the streets of the metropolis. During the next fifteen years this right was liberally exercised from legislative headquarters at Albany.

The franchise policy under which the principal streets of New York were covered by local or legislative grants, or both, prior to 1875, was fundamentally wrong in three most important particulars.

Perpetual Franchises

In the first place, the grants were unlimited, which, under the decisions of the New York courts, means perpetual; that is to say, the privilege granted to a private company to construct street railway fixtures in a public street without a specific limitation of the period during which those fixtures may be maintained is construed in New York as a vested right that cannot be taken away either by local or by legislative action, either with or without compensation for the physical property. While such a franchise might perhaps be condemned, the city would in that case be com

pelled to pay not only for the physical property, but also the full present value of the perpetual right to occupy the street.

In the second place, the fatal mistake was made of relying upon competition in the street railway business as practically the only means of securing adequate service at reasonable rates. The state and the city absolutely failed to recognize in the charters and franchises of the various street railway companies any obligation resting upon any of these companies to extend their lines beyond the routes originally selected by the companies themselves. The rule was laid down, although by no means always followed, that every company should within a certain time construct the entire route which it had selected, but when extensions or new routes were to be built, it was left for the existing companies or other companies, impelled solely by the desire for profit, to apply for the privilege of building them.

In the third place, no public control whatever was exercised over the disposition of the companies' gross earnings. No adequate provision was made for the continual upkeep and improvement of the lines, and no provision whatever for the writing-off of the capital or any part of it out of earnings.

The results were perpetual franchises, a multiplicity of companies, and no check upon overcapitalization.

By 1875 the people of New York had learned that something was wrong with this franchise policy, but instead of changing the fundamental principles upon which the policy was founded, they began to apply various remedies which were recommended by the political doctors from time to time. The gold cure, limited diet, bleeding and gymnastic exercises in a hobble skirt have all been tried with indifferent success. To begin with, a constitutional amendment was adopted, effective January 1, 1875, by which the legislature was forbidden to authorize the construction of a street railway without the consent of both the local authorities and the abutting property owners, or in lieu of the consent of the property owners, a determination by commissioners appointed by the general term of the Supreme Court that the proposed railway ought to be constructed and operated. This provision effectually stopped the practice of legislative grants by special acts. It also stopped the construction of street railways