LXI
Meanwhile, the franchises were expiring, and the time drew on when the company would have no rights left in the streets. And here was the opportunity for the mind that had the power, or the defect, of isolating propositions, of regarding them as absolute, of ignoring the intricate relativity of life. “Put the company off the streets,” was the cry; “make it stop running its cars; bring it to its knees.” However, we could not bring the company to its knees without bringing the riders to their feet; we could not put the company off the streets, without at the same time and by the same process, putting the people on the streets; when the cars stopped running the people began walking. The public convenience was paramount.
Then Mr. Cornell Schreiber, the City Solicitor, hit upon a plan. He drew an ordinance providing that the company could use the streets wherein its rights had expired, only on the condition that it carry passengers at a three-cent fare, and the ordinance was at once passed by the council. It was of doubtful legality, but it had its effect in a worldof human beings. Before it was effective even, people were tendering three cents as fare; and in the face of the difficulty of dealing with a whole populace in this mood, the company agreed to put in force a temporary rate of three cents during the rush hours of the morning and evening, and it lowered fares in the other hours and made further concessions. And there we let the matter rest.
And, since the education of the general mind never stops, the people were learning. Their patience was time and again exhausted by the unavoidable length of the franchise dispute, for the problem was to them, as to most Americans, new, the legal questions in which the whole subject was prolific had not been settled, there was the interruption of business and convenience and pleasure attending long continued negotiations, and perhaps more than all that irritation of the public temper which proceeds from all communal disputes. The company’s representatives counted on all this to tire the people out; and since the controversy assumed a political complexion, and there was as always the difficulty of sustaining the mass will, they had hopes that by delay the people in weariness would surrender. The time came when the sentiment in favor of municipal ownership was so strong that the Independents adopted the view I had expressed and declared it to be their purpose to grant no renewals of franchises at all, but to let the company operate on sufferance until the city itself could take over the lines.
During the course of the long struggle a changehad come over the spirit of the people, and this change had been reflected in the laws. The greatest difficulty had been found in the city’s want of autonomy; the cities of Ohio not only lacked the power to own and operate public utilities, but they even had few rights in contracting with the private companies. The street-car companies had always been more ably and assiduously represented in the state legislature than had the people themselves; the people had not had the strength to wrest these powers from the legislature, and indeed, in their patience and toryism, they had not made many efforts to do so. Thus our campaign led us out into the state, and the end, toward which we had to struggle, was the free city; the last of our demands was home rule. In the relations between public utility corporations and the municipality, our cities were a whole generation behind the cities of Great Britain, Germany, France and Belgium. Indeed, in relation to all social functions we were not much further advanced than was Rome in the second century.
As to the medieval cities of Italy, the free cities of Germany and the cities of Great Britain, struggling all of them against some overlord, some king, noble or bishop, so at last there came to our cities a realization of the vassalage they were under. Their destinies were in the hands of the country politicians in the state legislature who had no sympathy with city problems, because they had no understanding of them. Oftenest indeed they had a contempt for them, they all held to the Puritan ideal. But a demand for freedom went up from Cleveland, fromCincinnati, from Columbus, from Toledo. The legislature began to make its reluctant concessions; it gave cities, for instance, the right to have street railway franchises referred to the people for approval or rejection. And at last in the great awakening, the state constitution was ultimately amended and cities were given home rule. It was the irony of life that Golden Rule Jones and Tom Johnson could not have lived to see that day!