Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/617

 THE PHILADELPHIA GAS WORKS 603

corporations. Why, then, should there be such undue haste ? If a month's consideration has resulted so advantageously to the city, is it not fair to assume that a still further and more careful discussion would result in still greater concessions to the city ? To answer this question other than by an emphatic affirmative corroborates the charges that have been openly and publicly made by men of the highest standing 1 and by responsible news- papers that improper influences have been at work to secure a speedy acceptance of the offer of the United Gas Improvement Company.

"The attitude of the majorities of the subcommittee and the joint committee of finance and gas in forcing the consideration of the United Gas Improvement Company's ordinance ; the refusal to allow the people to vote on the question of leasing ; the grossly unfair character of the report of Henry Clay as chairman of the subcommittee, in which he suppresses all reference to certain important testimony against the leasing of the works and elaborates all that was presented in favor of leas- ing and against municipal ownership; the practical ignoring of all other offers ; the stolid persistency with which the majority of the joint committee refused every reasonable request for further time and careful consideration and for a full transcript of all the testimony produced before the subcommittee; and the recollection of the scandalous disclosures in connection with the passage of the Mutual Automatic Telephone Company's ordinance all tend to strengthen the conviction that has been growing in the public mind that the charges already referred to are not without substantial foundation.

"Taking up the report of the chairman of the subcommittee, which reads more like the brief of a paid advocate of the United Gas Improvement Company than the calm and impartial review

'Hon. Wayne MacVcagh in his speech at the Academy of Music said that every councilman who voted for the ordinance would go through life with the brand on his forehead " Bribed by the rich to rob the poor;" and Peter Boyd, Esq., a well- known lawyer, deliberately charged that there had been a conspiracy between the company and certain city officials by which the plant was allowed to run down and deteriorate in efficiency.