Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/625

 THE PHILADELPHIA GAS WORKS 6ll

of distribution should be taken up and considered with the greatest care, and perhaps it would be advisable under all the circumstances to have an estimate made of the cost that would be involved in effecting the desired changes.

"The gas works are a most valuable asset and should never pass from the absolute control of the city. The plant is valued at about $30,000,000, close to the actual debt of the city at this time, and money will be well expended if the changes suggested are carried out."

In less than eight months from this last official utterance, Mayor Warwick attached his signature to the United Gas Improvement Company's ordinance, which, as we have already seen, is $10,000,000 less advantageous to the city than the Baker proposition, and he signed the ordinance without granting the request of those opposed to the lease for an opportunity to appear before him and give voice to their objection, a course of procedure heretofore unheard of in the city of Philadelphia.

After signing the ordinance he gave out an interview, in the course of which he said : " It is a grave question in my mind whether or not any municipality should operate any manufactur- ing industry." No comment is necessary when this statement is compared with those made by him in his annual messages of 1896 and 1897.

This conspicuous "modern instance " is not a confession that municipal ownership is a failure, for if there was one thing brought out clearly and distinctly, it was that, with all the draw- backs and with all the political management, the Philadelphia gas works had yielded a profit and had resulted in reduced rates of gas. As the gas committee of the Municipal League in one of its published statements on the question said :

"The league must again call attention to the possibilities of further reductions in the price of gas under municipal ownership and the impossibility of any very considerable reduction under the United Gas Improvement Company's proposition. In the period from 1867 to 1877 the price was reduced under municipal operation from $3.00 per 1000 cubic feet to $2.15; in the