Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/813

 PUBLIC OWNERSHIP VERSUS PUBLIC CONTROL 797

paving on, the street surface occupied by its tracks. The interest which it pays on the cost of the subway is sufficiently in excess of the interest the city has to pay on the bonds issued for its con- struction, to retire the bonds and make the subway the city's property free and clear in less than forty years.

The total of these taxes and service obligations, and excess interest payment, now amounts to upward of $1,550,000 a year, or nearly 13 per cent, of the gross earnings. Glasgow, with a street-railway revenue of $3,178,471, in 1902-3, pair into the " Common Good " $121,650; to which should be added the taxes which the municipality as a whole assesses upon the tramway property, amounting in 1902-3 to $88,488. A further addition should be made of $83,982, being the average annual payment by the Tramway Committee since 1894 into the sinking-fund for reduction of the capital debt ; these payments, of course, are profit to the municipality, in that they give it that much clear interest in the property as an asset. The total of these payments which go to the public good is $294,120, or slightly over 9 per cent, of the gross revenue. The Boston corporation, serving the same popu- lation as the Glasgow lines touch, pays to public-benefit account more than five times the gross amount so paid by the Glasgow system, and 39 per cent, more in proportion to earnings.

The question of fares cannot be considered apart from that of the amount of service furnished. What are the facts, then, as between Glasgow and Boston ? Glasgow has a graduated scale of fares, ranging from I cent for a little over half a mile to 8 cents for 9 miles. The standard 5-cent fare in this country takes a passenger 5.8 miles in Glasgow. Needless to say, the confusion and complications of such a system, for the varying distances traveled, would prohibit it from meeting the demand for the utmost possible expedition on our large American city transit systems. Even more serious is the increasing rate of penalty it imposes upon the wide distribution of traffic, and hence upon the building up of workingmen's homes in the suburbs.

In Boston the uniform fare is 5 cents, and by means of the free-transfer privilege it is possible for this sum to ride from one end of the system to the other, fully 20 miles. Wage-earners and