Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/808

 792 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

and in the last year under the old system amounted to over $27,- ooo; in the last thirteen months, over $32,000. Further, it should not be overlooked that if Glasgow had been obliged, as any private corporation purchasing the plant would have been, to pay annual interest, say at 2 l / 2 per cent., on the $980,000 of capital investment which had been paid up by the private company, the amount available for Common Good would have been less by about $24,500 each year than it actually has been since the city began operations. In other words, instead of $43,794 from 1895 to 1899, it would have been about $19,300 in each of those years; instead of $121,650 today, it would be just over $97,000.

On the other hand, on the basis of what the old company actually was accomplishing just prior to 1894, with the same unpaid capital debt to carry as that taken over by the city, the municipal management has steadily increased the net return to the " Common Good," and that with some reduction of fares, installation of a modern system, and altogether improved service.

And it is further to be noted that the movement toward municipalization of British tramways is steadily forging ahead. Huddersfield has been operating its own system since 1882; Plymouth and Blackpool, since 1893; Leeds, since 1894; Sheffield, since 1896; Liverpool, since 1897; while Manchester has only recently undertaken the same experiment, the largest of the kind in England, covering nearly 150 miles of trackage. In 1901, 56 propositions for municipalizing tramways were authorized, the estimated cost ranging from about $23,000 to $14,600,000. According to the Board of Trade Returns spe- cially obtained on this subject in 1900, 70 out of a total of 177 tramway systems were then under public ownership and manage- ment, and these 70 represented a total expenditure on capital account of $49,650,737, as against $56,116,580 for the 107 private corporations.

The circumstance above all others which has made fairly satisfactory results possible, as compared with the previous sys- tems, is the relatively high character of British municipal adminis- tration. Through long traditions of decency and much clarifying experience, these cities have developed the habit of picking men