Forty Years of It

by Brand Whitlock

For a people to assume and for a decade consistently to maintain an attitude toward a public question therefore was a triumph of the democratic principle. That is what the people of Cleveland did; that is what the people of Detroit did; that is what the people of Toledo did. The successive stages of this process were most interesting to observe, the more especially since they caught in the movement even some of the street railway group and its political confreres themselves.

In its origin the public will was destructive no doubt, that was the inarticulate disgust born of the long endurance of inadequate service, all the miseries of that contemptuous exploitation of the people so familiar in all the cities of America. To this, on the customary revelations of a corrupt domination of the political machinery of the city by the street railway company, there was added a moral rage—the one element needed to provide the spark for the mine. At first this rage against the company was such that any action taken by officials was popular so long as it injured or harassed or was somehow inimical to the company. And in consequence there was developed a kind of local jingoism or chauvinism; whenever popularity slackened or it was felt necessary to remind the electorate back in the ward of the sleepless vigilance of their representative in the council, a councilman had only to introduce some resolution that would be against the company’s interest. It was unfortunate, and had its evil phase, as any suggestion of intellectual dishonesty must ever have, and it made serious dealing with the subject extremely difficult and hazardous. It was difficult to recognize any of the company’s rights; and it was always at the risk of misunderstanding, and with the certainty of misrepresentation that this was done. But of course it was necessary to do this, in the course of the long and complicated transaction, that constant and inflexible opposition of the public with the private interest which now assumed the aspect of a noisy and furious war, and now the softer phases of diplomatic negotiations. Of course there were always those in town who knew exactly what was to be done; they could settle the vexatious problem with a facile gesture, between the whiffs of a cigarette on the back platform of a street car, or in an after dinner speech between the puffs of a cigar. The one was apt to advise that the “traction company be brought to time at once,” the other that an “equitable” settlement be “arranged” by conservative business men. Meanwhile the problem obviously consisted in the necessity of recognizing the private right in the proprietors and of securing the public right to the people, and to do this it was necessary to search out, and isolate, like some malignant organism, the injustice that somewhere lurked in this complex and irritating association.

In my first campaign we proposed to grant no renewal of franchises at a rate of fare higher than three cents. Jones had advised it, and I had been committed to it long before. It was Tom Johnson’s old slogan, and it was popular. I used to explain to the crowds my own conviction that the problem never would be settled until we had municipal ownership, but there was in Toledo in those days very little sentiment for municipal ownership, and my conviction met with no applause, and was received only with mild toleration. In the second campaign, there was more indorsement; in the third there was a certain enthusiasm for the principle, in the fourth it seemed to be almost unanimous, and now the principle has become one of the cardinal articles of faith. I do not wish it to appear that I had converted all these people to my view; I had not tried to do that, and doubtless could not have done so had I tried, but the conviction came by the very necessities of the situation.

LIX

Those men who ventured early into the street-car business were pioneers; they assumed large risks, and they rendered a public service. They had the courage to undertake experiments; they had faith that the town would grow and become in time a city. And they staked all on the chance. They had little difficulty, if they had any at all, in securing franchises from the city to use the streets, for the people of the city were glad to have the convenience of transportation. Indeed many of the lines were community enterprises, organized by the men of a given neighborhood for the sake of the transportation merely, and not with any notion of personal profit.

Franchise ordinances then were loosely drawn; men had no conception of what changes the future was to bring about, they lacked the imagination to prefigure it, the faith to believe it, and so the street-car promoters who came along a little later were the heirs of advantages which otherwise they would not have obtained. Under these advantages, these privileges, they or their immediate grantees were enabled to take over for their own use and profit the enormous social values that were being created in cities, not by them, but by all those families who moved in, and toiled, and wrought and built the modern city.

This was the first phase of the street-car business, its experimental stage, commensurate with the rapid, disordered growth of the city in the middle and western states of America. Few indeed of the pioneers in the business became wealthy; many no doubt lost their money, though they tried in vain to vary or improve their fortunes through the changes that were rapidly developing the mighty problem of transporting the crowded populations of our cities. There were, for instance, the days when mules were substituted for horses, and sacrificed rapidly and ruthlessly on the principle that it was cheaper to replace them than to care for them, a system about as bad in its consuming cruelty as that adopted by some factories with reference to their human employees. Then, in a few of the larger cities, there were the cable cars, but the second phase came with the adoption of electricity as a motive power, and the coincident development, almost a miracle, of the towns of middle and western America into real cities.

With electricity as a motive power, and the consequent cheapening of operation, the street-car business entered upon its second phase, and it ushered in at once the era of speculation in franchises and social values, watered stocks and bonds. The era of exploitation came upon us, and out of these privileges, out of other privileges to conduct other public utilities, i. e., privileges to absorb social values, enormous fortunes were made, with all the evils that come with a vulgar, newly-rich plutocracy. To keep, and extend, and renew these privileges, they must have their lawyers, and their newspapers to mislead and debauch the public mind; they must go into politics, organize and control the machines of both parties, bribe councilmen and legislators and jurors, and even have judges on the bench subservient to their will, so that the laws of the state and the grants of the municipality might be construed in their favor. The sordid, tragic tale of their domination of municipal politics is now universally known, and in the tale may be read the causes of most of our municipal misrule. It happened in Toledo as it happened everywhere, such is the inexorability of the general law, and the popular reaction was the same.

And so we came upon a new, the third stage, since I have set out to be scientific in analysis of tractions, and the very name by which these big enterprises have latterly been called, that is, public service corporations, suggests the meaning and indicates the significance of that era. Two facts, or principles, had become perfectly apparent; first, that transportation, the primal necessity of a modern city, is a natural monopoly, and must be treated as such. Second, that if these public utility corporations are to continue to hold these monopolies, they must become public service corporations indeed, that is, they must serve the public. No more, then, the old corporation contempt of the people, at least outwardly expressed, but a softer voice in addressing them, and a new respect, perhaps grown sincere. Their old lobbyists disappeared from the council chamber and the city hall—for eight years they were not seen there. The companies had been primarily profit making institutions and only incidentally for public service, they were operated for the private benefit of their owners in contempt of public right; the service was secondary.

We may say that this third era is the era of regulation, or, as it is more apt to be, attempted regulation, by the city, in which the principle of the public interest as paramount to the private interest is to be the basis on which a private company shall be permitted to operate. This era will endure long enough to demonstrate itself a failure, the general mind will continue to learn, to inform itself, democracy will develop new functions, and we shall enter on the fourth, and perhaps the final stage, that of municipal ownership.