Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/620

 606 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

$5, 000,000 with the old pipes, etc. We will charge 6 per cent. Does anybody doubt but what we could borrow that at 3 per cent.? Call it 6 per cent., however. Add the $300,000 to the taxes and water rent which, taken out of the gross profit, would still leave a net profit of $510,806. Pretty good for a bad plant!"

Neither an unmistakable mandate from the people nor public demand nor an unexpected crisis in the management of the works being responsible for the change of front on the part of council- men, what was the motive which led seventy-nine common coun- cilmen and twenty-three select councilmen to determine to hand over one of the city's most valuable assets to a rich corporation making the least advantageous offer? Were there any argu- ments brought out in the debate which were so powerful as to overcome previously formed judgments and to lead the members to defy public opinion? None were made in public. Indeed, the conduct of the majority was such as to lead one councilman on the last day of the debate in the lower chamber to say : " I arise to make a demand. I want to demand, from those who vote for this lease, that arguments in its favor, that figures and facts, shall be presented explaining why this bill shall be passed. They have not yet presented a single fact or a single reason for the leasing of the gas works. They have given no intima- tion why they favor it from a business point of view. That is what they promised, and that is what we want. We want to understand why they want us to vote to give this property away, and I insist that they shall present their facts, if they have any."

Nor were any such facts at that or at any other time forth- coming. Every reasonable demand on the part of the minority faithful to the city's interest was met with a stolid and stubborn silence, and, as I have already stated, the previous question, so that the citizens of Philadelphia had presented to them the unusual spectacle of their sworn representatives determining in two sessions of common council and one session of select council a question involving millions of dollars, extending over a genera- tion, and touching the comfort and convenience of a community of a million and a quarter of inhabitants, and one to which, according