Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/248

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS

come of $750 per street mile. In 1894 the city began to operate the lines itself. The fares were reduced 33 per cent., besides special tickets to laborers, so that the average is under two cents, and over one-third of all fares are one cent each.

The private company had worked its men twelve and fourteen hours a day and paid ir- regular and unsatisfactory wages. The city at once reduced the number of hours to ten, and fixed a satisfactory scale of wages. And, com- pared with what it formerly was, the service has been greatly improved. In spite of all these acts for the benefit of the public, the roads which had cost the city nothing, now net over all charges for improvements, etc., one-fourth of a million annually. In 1892 the city bought out a private electric light company, and now has the monopoly of furnishing electric light and power. This promises to be a source of enor- mous revenue for the cit}'.

For sanitary reasons, the citj^ built a number of public wash-houses, with all modern conve- niences, so that a woman living in a small apart- ment can take a basketful of clothes to a i)ublic wash-house and for four cent-s an hour can have a stall and use all the machinery for washing and drying, and at the end of an hour take her basket of clothes home, washed and dried. For the same reasons, public baths and parks or pleasure grounds were established ; and the city con- demned a large amount of poor tenement prop- erty and tore the houses down and built whole 214

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