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November 12, 1897, Mayor Charles F. Warwick, by giving his official approval to the ordinance providing for the leasing of the Philadelphia gas works to the United Gas Improvement Company for a period of thirty years, consummated a series of events which, when considered as a whole, may be regarded as a modern instance of the overpowering influence of rich and powerful corporations over the scruples, better judgment, and previously expressed opinions of public officials.

On June 4, 1896, the common council of Philadelphia passed the following resolution relative to the sale of the gas works:

In the face of this emphatic and unqualified expression of opinion, the same body on November 8, 1897, less than a year and a half after the above action had been taken, passed, by a vote of seventy-nine to fifty-one, an ordinance leasing the same gasworks to the United Gas Improvement Company, a corporation that offered the city by far less favorable terms than any