MICHIGAN ROADS AND FORESTS. 



Official Organ of The Michigan Road Mikrn AwociaUon and Michigan Foieilry Atioutbon 

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REAPING THE WHIRLWIND. 

 (From the Michigan Investor.) 



The news comes from San Francisco that "Abe"' 

 Ruef, the leader of the conspirators for corrupt 

 government in that city, has finally broken down 

 and confessed to his connection with the cor- 

 ruption which has been disclosed by the grand 

 jury, after listening to the evidence produced by 

 the United States secret service agents who were 

 loaned to the city for that purpose. Back of and 

 behind this carnival of crime which has been 

 going on in San Francisco, affecting the integrity 

 of city councilmen and boards of supervisors, 

 leading to the sale of public franchises almost in 

 the open and the distribution of great sums of 

 money among those who were called upon to 

 vote for the same, lies an interesting lesson. For 

 many years, in this country, there has been going 

 on a senseless and ill-based propaganda concern- 

 ing the value of franchises. Persons and corpor- 

 ations who had gained control of public service 

 enterprises in the earlier days, into which they 

 liad put their money without any very great as- 

 surance that even the principal would remain safe, 

 while the income might be small, were lucky 

 enough, with the growth of American cities, to 

 realize very largely upon their investments. So 

 large, in fact, were these realizations that, natur- 

 ally, jealousy was excited concerning the holdings 

 of those who had made investments in this line 

 of enterprises. The sense of competition was 

 awakened and under the guise of public spirit 

 and care for the interests of the "dear people" a 

 class of demagogues developed who proceeded to 

 inveigh against the holders of such franchises, 

 which had been improved and operated upon. 



The denunciations took the form of demands 

 for lower rates for the service given, or for tax- 

 ation of the alleged valuations contained in fran- 

 chise rights. The entire list of recent reformers, 

 including the Pingrees, the LaFollettes, the Folks, 

 and the minor examples of the same class, have 

 "been harping upon the giving away of "the public 

 birthright" to corporations, although at no stage 

 of the same was the public, as represented by 

 these individuals, willing to pioneer in any form 

 of public service. It was always willing that the 

 risks involved in the earliest investments should 

 "be undertaken by private capital. It was only 

 when the enterprises had matured and had passed 

 the stage of risk that the public was excited to 

 believe that someone had gotten something or 

 other from the public for which he did not pay 

 and for which either he should be taxed or his 

 income reduced. 



The only result of this propaganda has been the 

 building up in the minds of a lot of ignorant 

 people of the notion that public franchises possess 

 some element of intrinsic value in themselves, 

 which makes it very desirable that they should 

 "be gotten hold of. Under the guise of promoters 

 of competitive organizations, bound to give the 

 people this or the other form of public service at 

 a cheaper rate, various groups of adventurers 

 throughout the country have become applicants 

 for public service enterprises, their sole and only 

 purpose being to use these franchises, when ob- 



tained, as the basis of a fictitious capitalization 

 which they would sell to the investor class. The 

 investor class, itself, had already been educated 

 far enough by the demagogues into the belief 

 that the franchises themselves possessed some in- 

 trinsic value other than that which attached to 

 them for their improvement and operation. Hero 

 then was something of capitalizable value which 

 adventurers might get from councils and for 

 which, in due course of time, they began to com- 

 pete, and this system of competition for such 

 public grants' naturally and logically led to the 

 offering of bribes in whatever form, whether of 

 money, of participation, or of other advantage, as 

 might be necessary to help secure the grants. 



This was exactly the case in San Francisco. A 

 lot of cheap skullduggery had been going on in 

 the council of that city, affecting the existence of 

 places of easy virtue. It was not until the fran- 

 chise adventurers who wanted franchises, either 

 for. the sake of levying blackmail on existing cor- 

 porations, or for the purpose of capitalizing their 

 alleged value and selling shares in the resultant 

 capital to the sucker class of investors, came upon 

 the scene, that the real business was done in big 

 figures. A marked example of this situation is 

 afforded by one of the incidents in the career of 

 corruption which was discovered in San Fran- 

 cisco. A telephone company had been in exist- 

 ence for a number of years, covering the field 

 well, at not excessive rates and making a very 

 good return for its investors upon its capital. A 

 rival telephone crowd, composed of adventurers 

 from the east who had already worked off some 

 reams of stock and bonds upon the unsuspecting 

 ime>tors in the central west, were looking for 

 new fields to conquer. San Francisco looked 

 good to them. They moved upon it for a tele- 

 phone franchise. They were so eager to get it 

 that not only did the corruption of the public of- 

 ficials not stand in their way, but members of the 

 group were actually bidding against themselves 

 to get the councilmen to demand for the fran- 

 chise even more than they were willing to take. 1 

 The result has been that corruption became ram- 

 pant, solely as the result of this competition for 

 franchises from men who themselves wanted to 

 use them for corrupt purposes; 



In the same way, other adventurers, taking ad- 

 vantage of the public education as to the im- 

 morality of street railway franchises, were seek- 

 ing competitive routes to those of the existing 

 street railway company and -either keeping it in 

 hot water by forcing it to meet the demands of 

 the council, or keeping the councilmen themselves 

 in their receptive mood by constantly offering 

 more and more money for the franchises. 



Having sown the wind, these fellows are now 

 reaping the whirlwind. The investigation into 

 affairs in San Francisco has resulted in catching 

 them all red-handed, and it is somewhat instruc- 

 tive that the leader of the corruptionists in that 

 city, in making his own excuses, upon pleading 

 guilty, divides the classes of those who had to 

 pay corrupt money into two groups, namely, those 

 who had to pay to protect existing properties 

 and those who tempted public officials in order 

 that they might themselves receive grants and 

 franchises, which could be capitalized and sold to 

 the unwary investor. 



The experience of San Francisco is only one 

 among those of the other cities of the country. 

 It has been felt in Detroit, though perhaps not 

 in so scandalous a way. It has been felt in Cleve- 

 land. It has been felt in Indianapolis. It has 

 been felt in Columbus and it will be felt in just 

 this corrupt way so long as the demagogue af- 

 fects to rail at the immorality of franchises and 

 their great value and the public continues to be- 

 lieve in him, coupling with its belief the always 

 natural willingness to get in on a good thing. 

 No investment, of any class, has been so liberally 

 touted in the last fifteen years, through the length 

 and breadth of the United States, as have been 

 those which have public franchises behind them, 

 and the touting has been done simply and solely 

 by the demagogues who have made the public 

 believe that there is something inherent in a 

 franchise which there is not which will make a 

 business based upon it a money-maker, regardless 

 of the ability or the care of those who manage it. 



MUNICIPAL SOCIALISM. 



Probably there is no more subtle lure before 

 the working classes today than municipal social- 

 ism. Shop-worn politicians, seeking to form a 

 new party after being cast aside by their old, have 

 brought forth a philosophy as radiant as an ani- 

 line dye. They propose that everybody shall own 

 everything and that they, the shop-worn ones, 

 shall be chosen to manage this, the greatest trust 

 in the world. 



But their Utopian idea has proven as illusive 

 as the sheen of the silver trout. In the blue wa- 

 ters of the mountain stream the trout is as a 

 mo. nilieain imprisoned;- touched by the coarse 

 hand of the angler, the sheen disappears; in its 

 place is an ugly scar and the silver trout becomes 

 a leper among its kind. 



Such is the fate of the city marred by the touch 

 of the city socialists. The doctrine itself i- as 

 evanescent as a summer rainbow. A month a^o 

 we suffered by reason of a fuel famine; just over 

 the mountain, they told us, is a city where the 

 people own their own gas plant and the fuel never 

 fails. We journey there, to find conditions worse 

 than at home; the city is a Utopia for politicians 

 only; the revenue from the gas plant has become 

 the spoils of a successful campaign. 



Xot here, but just a little farther on, in Puritan 

 Massachusetts, there is a city where practical so- 

 cialism prevails; there is the Utopia \ve are seek- 

 ing. We arrive in time to see the citizens driving 

 the red ranters from the despoiled municipal 

 buildings rand the grand jury probing charges of 

 socialist graft. 



It isn't here, but just over across the Atlantic; 

 in Scotland the bonnie blue bells are blooming 

 about a city that has solved the problem of mu- 

 nicipal government. Glasgow owns all its public 

 utilities, and in Glasgow there are no taxes and 

 no slums. 



There we find the pallid, skin of the leper where 

 we sought the sheen of the silver trout. The tax 

 rate of Glasgow, is among the highest in Scotland, 

 and the infant mortality in the slums is so 

 great as to occasioa an investigation by a royal 

 commission. 



Glasgow,' they tell us, is hampered by an un- 

 friendly parliament ; it is to Switzerland that we 

 must turn for socialism unadulterated. In the 

 rarified atmosphere of the Alps communities are 

 living as one family, prosperous and happy. But 

 Switzerland proves to be only a decaying repub- 

 lic. The bankers of France and Germany keep 

 their securities in Swiss vaults, because the laws 

 of Switzerland are more friendly, to capital than 1 

 those of any other European country. Deserted 

 villages mark the byways through the passes of 

 the Alps; the citizens of the. socialist communi- 

 ties are emigrating to America. In the Alpine 

 valleys one hears only of the wonderland of eter- 

 nal springtime on the slopes of the Pacific, a land 

 where the people are their own masters, where 

 there is no executive council to rob the citizens 

 of their liberties, where the mountains are ribbed 

 with yellow metal and the streams have sands of 

 gold. Turn westward for 10,000 miles, following 

 the course of the sun and we shall reach the 

 true Utopia, say the Swiss. 



Always the pallid leper in the pool of the silver 

 trout. i 



Finally one realizes that human nature is older 

 than the nostrums of the shop-worn politicians. 

 Nature herself discriminates ; the blacksmith is a 

 mighty man at the forge, but his training renders 

 him impossible for the loom ; the horse that wins 

 the derby proves a failure harnessed to the van. 



Municipal socialism has been tested in every 

 country where enlightenment prevails, and it has 

 always carried the racehorse to the van, the 

 blacksmith to the loom. Confusion follows, av- 

 arice creeps in, and soon to the waiting world 

 comes the desolate cry "Unclean !" The path of 

 human progress is still the mountain route ; the 

 rose-strewn byways through the valleys lead only 

 to the quicksands at the river's brim. 



In the day-dawn of history the first municipal 

 socialists builded the tower of Babel. Probably 

 they assured the taxpayers of the ancient land 

 of Shinar that the revenue from the tolls would 

 be sufficient to pay a handsome premium on the 

 investment. Intermittently through the ages the 



