ELECTRIC-POWER PROPOSALS—THE MAYOR'S SPECIAL PLEADING.

Evening Star, Issue 11453, 22 January 1901, Page 6

ELECTRIC-POWER PROPOSALS—THE MAYOR'S SPECIAL PLEADING.

TO THE EDITOK. Sir,—l promised to return to the above as soon as I had received the technical authorities. They have Bince come to hand. Now, when the great Carlyle as a schoolmaster was once walloping one of his scholars'a joiner pub his head inside the school door and said : " Jist don't oot richt, man, an' no mince matters." So if I speak plainly it in because I think it needs pla : n speech. First, let me say I had no h*nd or part in the issue of the circular that was referred to in your issue ofj Saturday. Had I wished to play that game I should have made it much stronger on other lines. The mayor in his speech and elsewhere has dilated much on ine municipalising of trams and the glorious results of municipal authorities controlling and administering th°m. Even to-dny (the 21st) in his manifesto he says: " Municipalization of tram services having proved a hnge success in nearly every case where it has been adopted." Let us see what the authorities the msyor quoted from have to say to this. The first I will take is Mr Benjamin Taylor, F.R. G.S., who, in on artioln n-i •The Municipal Ownership of Trams,'says with regard to the Glasgow tramvayj: "The Glftfgow tramway accounts are k«pt on a system which has provoked a good deal of criticism, and which certainly would not be permissible in an undertaking carried on for profit. For a municipal enterprise carried on for the service of the public and not for the profit of individual proprietors the system may bs reasonable enough. It does, however, serve to show a surplus which in a commercial enterprise would not be recognised as profit." And then Mr Taylor soes into figures to prove liis point, and he finally winds up his article as follows:—"In no single instance can the municipal working of tramways be demonstrated to be a commercial success, and in no Bingle instance has municipal management fulfilled the socialistic ideal either in respect of its servants or its passengers." I will next quote from a late number of the 'Street Railway Journal' what has never yet been challenged or contradicted in subsequent issues. Mr Charles T. Yetkes, of Chicago, is the authority. He says; "In every instance where"it (municipal ownership of trams in U.S.A) has been tried it has proved a failure," and he emphasises the point by referring to the finding of the Special Committee appointed by the Legislature of New York to investigate this question, who report: "Under all conditions and circumstances it would seem that ownership and operation of street railways by municipal authorities is quite impracticable at the present time," etc., etc. And so I could go on repeating the earns kind of Jeremiah lamentations aa to the sanguine anticipations as compared with the actual results obtained—and yet I believe in municipal ownership per se. Now, that may seem paradoxical, bnt I will explain it later.

I do not propose yet a while to inflict on the ratepayers intricate arrays of figures, because figures used as the mayor used them without the contextual checkings and explanations are misleading and deceptive, bat I may point out that the figures and facts given by Mr John Young, general manager of the Glasgow Corporation tramwavs, do not agree with those given by Mr Walter Piton, the chairman and convener of the Glasgow Tramways Committee for the same year ; and having once for pastime waded through Lewis Carroll's algebraical acrostics I know how fallacious figures by themselves are.

But the inferences to be drawn are simply these : (a) That if Danedin his determined to municipalise its trams, and if it has definitely decided that electric traction is to be employed, then it will want much wiser management both in its inception, its construction, development, and future administration than the Council, led by the present mayor, have so far given evidence of. (b) And, further,"every part of the question wants more dispassionate and unbiased consideration than the mayor so far has shown.

There are innumerable openings for overlooking concealed charges, unexpected contingencies, and future dangers to the ratepayers' pookets than the Council have yet conceived.—l am, etc., MILLEN COUGHTBKY,

January 21. P.S.—I have not yat heard the result of the poll, which does not affeet what I have written.—M.C.