by bribing the councils to get their franchises. Then they have to keep on bribing to prevent the granting of rival franchises, and measures looking to the reduction of prices, and all other legislation injurious to their interests. To secure immunity from interference with their monopolistic right to overcharge their inestimable privilege of taking something for nothing— and to intrench themselves in the law, they put their money and influence into politics, robbing the public with one hand, and with the other bestowing a part of the booty on the officers of the law, to keep them from stopping the game. This is well known to be the situation in Boston, New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, and other large cities. In Northampton, Mass., it was found that all the city government from the mayor down were holders of stock in the electric lighting company. A member of council in Paris, Ill., says: "The light companies are composed of sharp, shrewd men. Their stock is distributed where it will do the most good. It was observed that the company took special interest in city elections. Men who never seemed to care who was made congressman, governor, or president, would spend their time and money to elect a man of no credit or standing in the community. The question was, 'Are you for the light company?"

One of the Aegis investigators questioned nearly every large city in the United States upon this point, and a great majority replied that the electric light companies are in politics, and some said that the companies own and run the city. Mayor Weir of Lincoln, Neb., wrote: "The electric companies are in politics in every sense of the word. They attempt to run our city politics, and usually succeed." Similar words came from the officials of Milwaukee, Kansas City, Sacramento, and many other cities. Electrified politics are not a success for the people; electricity is undoubtedly beneficial to the body politic when properly administered, but it will not do to leave the treatment to unprincipled quacks, who care nothing for the health of the patient, if they can only get his

money.

In one case public ownership has been crippled and finally destroyed by the scheming of a private company. Michigan City built a public electric light plant in 1886 with 84 arcs, for $7,500. During the first three years the cost per arc was $43. Then the Electric Street Railway Co. wished to buy the plant and had some backing in the government. The opposition, however, was strong. The result was that

the cost mysteriously increased to $80 per arc, and at last in 1892 the plant was sold to the E. S. R. Co. for $2,500, the company agreeing to furnish the city with light at a cost not to exceed $75 per arc. The moral is that if a private company owns the government or the officers in charge of the light plant, it can nullify the benefits of public ownership. Public light works must be entrusted to men who are true to the interests of their employers. Fortunately such breaches of trust are very rare; so far as I know, this is the only instance. With this sole exception diligent search and questioning among the cities owning electric plants, has failed to reveal the least indication of corruption arising therefrom or connected therewith, the evidence being on the contrary that good government has been developed and strengthened, through the increased interest taken by the people in municipal affairs in consequence of their increased magnitude and importance.

§ 6. Stock Watering is another favorite pastime with elec- v tric light companies, as with all other companies except those of a military nature that have no stocks but of a kind with which water does not agree. We have already shown in § 3 that the capitalization of the Boston Electric Light Company is probably almost half water, and the symptoms are strong in the Edison also. In 1894 its capitalization was reported as $3,150,000 and it was assessed on $816,300— it was willing to pay dividends and interest on nearly four times the value it wished to pay taxes on. What a dainty plan it is for a little group of men (women are not yet sufficiently "developed," thank goodness) to pay in $100,000, and vote themselves stock to the amount on its face of $500,000! Or better still to issue a million of stock and bonds, keep a good lot of it, give your friends some, and the legislators and councilmen some, sell the rest, build the works with a part of the money you get from the "bloomin' public" in this quiet way, spend another part to buy the sort of politics and laissez-faire administration your business needs, and put the remainder in your pocket; then make some light, charge three or four times what it is worth, get a contract from your friends in power to light the city, turn in a small valuation to the assessors so as to make expenses light, but roll up the capitalization so as to spread out big profits over a large surface and make them look thin and small to the stingy people who are apt to object to a man's making a few hundred per cent,-nice plan, isn't it? almost as good as a bank robbery for getting hold of other people's funds, almost as good for rapidity and a great deal safer. And

then if the people should wake up and attempt to take control you can put on an innocent look and tell them it's mean to ruin your trade, and if they insist they at least ought to buy up your plant at the entire amount of your capitalization.

How do you like the picture, my dear American citizen? You have to pay all the bills; you create the wealth that pays for the light plant or construct it with your own hands, and then you pay two or three times the worth of the light you use in order that a parcel of men, who fool you with some cunning accounts and slips of paper, may grow rich in return for the service of cheating you. Not all the companies are organized in this way-only the most unprincipled men turn the screws with all their power-but the principles set forth above are applied to a greater or less degree in a large proportion of corporations of every description. It is strange indeed that men who would die before they would pay one cent of tribute to a foreign prince under the name of tribute, will pay without a protest many millions of de facto tribute every year to the princes of deception, both foreign and domestic.

$7. The Bad Service rendered by many of the private companies is matter of common complaint. Philadelphia pays inspectors to test the are lights nightly to see if the companies are living up to their contracts. The results are given in Chief Walker's reports. Many times the lamps fall far below the agreement. The latest report at hand (that for 1893, p. 108) shows that 7,100 lights were deducted from the bills of the various companies during the year. The Aegis of March 3, 1893, p. 168, gives a list of thirty-five cities in twenty states whose lamps were examined by experts and found to be far below the contract agreement.

Public ownership is not an absolute guarantee of good service, but a public monopoly has at least no interest opposed to good service. A business is apt to be managed in the interests of its owners. If the people own the lights they will be more apt to get what they want than under an antagonistic ownership. The servants of the people, with a good civil service, will be more apt to do the people's will, than the servants of a company whose will is opposed to the people and who are in the business to get all they can and give no more than they must.

$8. Competition Does not Solve the Problem and Cannot. -The people have sought relief in competition, but have found it foolishly expensive to build two or more plants in the same area, each one capable of doing the whole work of

the district, and have discovered that it is always a failure in regard to prices, because the companies, after a little, are sure to combine, openly or in secret, and lift the prices higher than ever, in order to pay dividends on the double investment. Allen R. Foote, the head of the Electrical Department of the Eleventh Census, says: "There can be no competition in the electric service of a city. Separate companies will quickly combine or agree on rates."

$9. Regulation is Likewise a Failure.-Finding the effort to secure competition worse than useless, the people have appointed commissioners to conserve the public interests, keep the companies in sight of the law, and regulate rates, but they have proved to be powerless to give the people reasonable rates because of the mass of watered stock in the hands of innocent purchasers, who have a right to demand that the company be allowed to charge rates which will enable it to pay dividends on all its stocks. The federal courts hold that they have this right under the constitution of the United States, any regulation that makes it impossible to pay a reasonable dividend being in reality confiscation. This, and the power of the company to tune its reports to any song that suits its ear, renders the commission of little or no account, except to raise the taxes a little higher so as to pay their salaries. The commissioners do not even succeed in stopping unjust discriminations by the companies. In fact, the commissioners are not infrequently men who sympathize with all the corporation methods and monopoly tactics of the companies they are appointed to watch. Even when they try to do their duty by the public they are frequently crippled by the power of the corporations in legislature and council, by the indefiniteness or unreliability of their returns, by the water in their stock, and by their cunning evasions of the law. Massachusetts has a commission system which has been referred to by the advocates of private enterprise all over the world, as the perfection of corporate control, and yet it has failed to secure reasonable rates (they are more unreasonable in Massachusetts than in many places that have no commissions, and are above the average charges for the whole United States), has failed to secure safety or good quality, or a stoppage of discriminations or violations of law, all of which facts are abundantly proved by the confessions in its own reports. And there is no other state in the Union that shows so much anxiety as Massachusetts to adopt public ownership of the electric lights; in a single year, twenty-five out of its 205 towns and cities having

more than 1,500 population acted upon the question, seventeen of them establishing a public system or voting for it, and eight appointing committees to investigate the subject. Regulation is capable of accomplishing much more than it ever has yet in America, but at its best it can never solve the monopoly problem. It is only an expensive makeshift, for it does not destroy the antagonism of interest between the monopolist and the public, which is the cause of all the evils of private monopoly.

§ 10. Public Ownership the Only Remedy.-Competition and regulation have failed and must always fail. One relief only is left: there is no escape from private monopoly but in public monopoly. That, with a good civil service, solves all the difficulties, and it is the only thing that can solve them because it is the only thing that can remove the antagonism of interest which is the taproot of the evils of monopoly.

When we examine cities that have already adopted this solution, we find economy, impartial administration, regard for public safety, efficient service, and a decided gain for good government-all the evils of private monopoly overcome, and no new evils introduced, if the civil service is guarded, which it is our duty to see done for the sake of good government in general, as well as in order to enjoy in the fullest degree the benefits of the public ownership of monopolies.

Public ownership is essential, not only to the highest economy, safety, and political purity, but also to the full attainment of those further fundamental purposes of statesmanship, the diffusion of wealth and the substitution of coöperation in the place of conflict.

§ 11. The Current of Opinion and Events Runs Swift and Strong toward the Municipalization of Electric Light.—In 1892, 125 cities in the United States owned and operated electric light works, in 1893 the Aegis found 190 cities and towns in the United States operating their own electric plants, and now there are more than 200.

In England, Scotland, and Wales more than 160 towns and cities own and operate their gas works, and a large number of them unite electric light works with the gas plants. In Germany a number of important cities have adopted this reform, among them Dresden, Darmstadt, Metz, Breslau, Barmen, Hamburg, Konigsberg, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Lubeck, etc. Berlin in 1888 made a contract with the Berlin Electric Light Company which provides that the city shall receive ten per cent of the company's gross receipts; if the company earns more than six per cent on its