matters of regulation but also the making of rates for gas, electric lighting power, telephones and water service. Under the original ordinance the commission's powers were only advisory, but under a charter amendment, adopted last March, it could actually make rates subject to an appeal to the city council. The personnel of the Commission has from the first been of the very highest order. During the eighteen months period of which we have spoken five have spoken five different men served, one of them, the chairman, Meyer Lissner, continuously. They were all men of large experience in business affairs, independent, forceful and devoted to the public interest. one, not even the noisiest and most impudent of the various groups that attacked these individuals and sought to pull them down, ever ventured to question their sincerity and uprightness. They received no compensation whatsoever, and the position carried no perquisites or privileges-only a great deal of very hard time-consuming work.

No

While the series of disturbances that finally drove the commission into resignation related entirely to rate-making, we must note that in passing that this is only one part of its function, and that during these eighteen months' of service these men accomplished a great deal of work that was of direct value to the people. For example, no complilation and indexing had ever been made of the franchises granted by the city to utility concerns that were still in force. The commission undertook that work and carried it through. Hereafter changes and additions can be made on an intelligent basis. Data and statistics have been gathered and put in order for ready use. System and forms for the annual reports of corporations to the city were adopted, and in many cases this involved changes in their methods of book

keeping. Then there were a number of matters in the relation of the people and the companies that were readjusted to the advantages of the utility user. The five-cent carfare was extended to cover several city annexations where it had not prevailed before. The time for the use of school tickets was lengthened. The transfer system was enlarged, and the loop method was proposed and adopted by the companies for clearing congestion at various points. Dummy applications for franchises were done away with and a cross-town system was devised and is now before the council for its acceptance.

The policy pursued by the commission in seeking a readjustment of such matters with the utility corporations was not one of insolence and domineering but of conciliation and fair dealing. It was all pioneer work in a field where the rights and the powers of the people have been as yet but vaguely defined. Even in states like New York and Massachusetts, where the system of regulation has been worked out in detail in legislation and through decisions of court, utility commissions are loath to bring matters to an open-and-shut issue. The Wisconsin commission, which has achieved very remarkable results, has from the beginning followed a moderate and conciliatory course. This policy did not at all please some of the local improvement associations, however, which demanded impossibilities, and when these were not forthcoming allowed their officers to use the most intemperate language about the Commission. The Examiner and Times in their anxiety to discredit the good government cause, were ready to publish anything that would reflect on the administration or on Mr. Lissner, the head of the Commission. Thus any unknown and unimportant person who was willing to fling a rock at the Utility

Commission was given immediate publicity and prominence. This bid naturally found many takers.

ELECTRIC LIGHT RATE LOWERED

In its first year of rate-making the Commission cut the electric lighting rate from 9 to 7 cents, thus saving the people of the city about $250,000 per annum. The companies contested the cut in a tricky fashion by a referendum that should postpone the ordinance until a regular election eighteen months later. The Municipal League then secured signatures enough to force the question to an issue at a special election for council, which was held at that time and the reduction carried by a large popular vote. This performance on the part of the companies did a good deal of harm in establishing a sentiment of angry hostility among the people against the lighting companies, and sympathetically against all utility companies. This made the position of the utility Board all the more difficult when later they sought to make readjustments in rates between different classes of consumers, lowering some and slightly raising others.

After a thorough investigation made for the city by a Wisconsin telephone expert, the Commission was convinced that the rate charged by the Home Tele phone Company for one-line house service was too low to pay interest on the bona fide investment, and they recommended an advance of twenty-five cents a month. There was the more reason for this as the existing schedule gave the Sunset the privilege of charging a higher rate than the Home. The Council, however, refused to accept the Board's recommendation, alleging that the expert must be in error, and it took the other alternative-that of reducing the Sunset rate to put the two companies on

a level. The Sunset went into court to contest the new rate on the ground that it was confiscatory. The city attorney asked that a second expert review the work of the first, and one of the best known telephone engineers of the country was employed. His verdict was that the first report was correct, which left the city with no case, as its own witness must declare the rate unjust.

By this time the rate-making of 1911 was at hand, and a board of experts, appointed to pass on the schedule of electric light and power charges more in detail than was attempted on the short notice of the preceding year, proposed a plan which was adopted by the Utilities Commission and given to the public. Under the charter protestants were allowed to appeal to the city council, which body should then fix the rates. Protests were immediate and vehement. Some of these were bona fide, and were due to the fact that the experts in their effort to develop a system that should be mathematically accurate and just to all classes of consumers were compelled to make some increases. But the actual uproar was created by a few men most of them unknown and new-comers to the city, who were anxious to exploit themselves in the newspaper columns held open for any form of injury to the good government cause. A number of councilmen were stampeded by this noisy attack, and they were represented in interviews-largely spurious, let us hope as entertaining a great contempt for experts and demanding that the people be given low utility rates anyhow without regard to the rights of the companies.

And right here it is necessary to speak of a curious persistent misunderstanding that cropped out through these proceedings with regard to the nature. and purpose of the work of the Utility