which reaches through all the ramifications of government. If an alderman is able to make a fortune out of the sale of public franchises belonging to his constituents, it is apparent that he will spend, not only effort, but money to secure his office, and in this expenditure, not only himself, but the whole voting body is contaminated, and, in a word, the system of representative government is overthrown.

It is well enough to trace this evil to its source. We commonly hear less about the bribers than about the officials bribed. But if there were no rich capitalists to buy public franchises, to secure monopoly in the use of public streets, certainly there would be no public officials to sell their votes and betray the rights of the people. And if the people's representatives had nothing to sell and were made to serve their constituents merely for honor or for the small salaries appertaining to their offices, corrupt men would not aspire to those offices, and there would be a chance of the people being represented in their legislative body by citizens of high character. As it is, so intimately is the idea of bribery associated with municipal office, especially in the large cities, that men of high character are often unwilling to accept those places.

It is not so in those cities where the public enjoys the use of their own property in the public streets. Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Glasgow in Great Britain are a few of the cities that might be mentioned where these public utilities have been reserved to the people. In those cities the municipal governing bodies are composed of the leading citizens and the class of legislation is so far ahead of our own as to make any loyal American blush at the comparison. There are cities in the United States where the gas and electric light plants are owned by the people and are turned to the public account with handsome profit to the treasury.

The time has gone by for capital to dismiss these schemes of municipal ownership of public utilities with contempt. The people are no longer to be scared by a name. We are told that public ownership would mean political corruption, but what political corruption would occur more odious than that which has developed under the existing system? That is a question which the Democracy propounds as coming from the heart of the people whose rights have been outraged under the existing system and who have ceased long since to heed the contemptuous or angry warnings of men in high places against the danger of taking the responsibility of their own affairs upon their own shoulders.

It is the fashion in certain quarters to classify all the proponents of municipal ownership as cranks and theorists. Against such assertions it is only necessary to name a few of those who have written or spoken for this great principle. As long ago as 1814 Henry Clay repeatedly agitated the national ownership of the telegraph. He foresaw and eloquently warned the people against the dangers of a telegraph monopoly in private hands. Ever since his day Congress has repeatedly been approached with appeals and petitions for the absorption of the telegraphs by the postoffice department. Charles Sumner, Hannibal Hamlin, Senators Edmunds, Dawes, Chandler, and N. P. Hill, Generals Grant, and Butler, Postmasters-General Johnson, Randall, Maynard, Howe, Creswell, and Wanamaker; Prof. Morse, himself, the inventor of the telegraph; Cyrus W. Field, founder of the Atlantic cable and a director in the Western Union Company; James Gordon Bennett, the Rev. Lyman Abbott, Prof. Ely, B. O. Fowler, Henry Demerest Lloyd, Terrence V. Powderly, Samuel Gompers, Marion Butler-these are only a few of a veritable host of men eminent in every high walk of life who have championed the rights of the people in this regard. James Russell Lowell, the late Bishop Phillips Brooks, and Francis A. Walker have expressed their sympathy with the movement. Numerous legislatures, city councils, boards of trade, chambers of commerce and labor organizations, representing millions of private citizens of less renown, but no less honesty, have added their voices to the appeal. Such newspapers as the New York Herald, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Times, Albany Express, Omaha Bee, Denver Republican, and San Francisco Post, representing every phase of political opinion, have agitated the measure. Two political parties have definitely demanded the government telegraph, and more than two millions of men by vote and petition have asked for it. Of the nineteen committees of the House and Senate which have reported on the question, seventeen have been in favor of and two against it. Here are some expressions of opinion from these and other eminent men upon the question of national telegraphs and the kindred question of municipal ownership of street railways:

Dr. Lyman Abbott says: "I am heartily in favor of municipal ownership of street railways; the experience of Manchester and Glasgow abroad has shown what may be done. But we have an illustration nearer home, in some respects more convincing. The Brooklyn bridge has furnished better conveniences for the traveler than those furnished by the

elevated system of railways or by the trolley cars on either side of the river, besides reducing fares, which no money-making corporation could be expected to do."

Dr. Felix Adler: "I am strongly in favor of municipal ownership and my reasons are two. First, the advantage to the general public in the shape of cheaper fare and better service; second, the advantage to be expected to accrue to the employes and indirectly to the wage-earning class in general by a tendency to advance wages and improve the condition of labor."

Prof. Richard T. Ely: "Municipal ownership of the street railways will be the greatest contribution to municipal reform yet effected in the United States."

Wm. Dean Howells: "I am heartily in favor of municipal ownership of street railways because it will cheapen the fares to those who most need cheap fare and will best serve all the interests of the public."

This list might easily be prolonged indefinitely, but one expression is so like the other that it would seem like mere iteration. Indeed it is not too much to say that the men who have given thought to this important question are numerous and belong to the most intelligent and patriotic portion of our citizenship, and that in all cases where they have investigated and spoken without prejudice their opinions are unanimously in favor of municipal ownership. Of course all that is true of municipal ownership of street railways applies with equal force to the municipal ownership of gas and electric lighting works, of water works, and indeed to any of the natural monopolies, including the express companies and telegraphs, which under private ownership have been turned to the enrichment of the individual at the expense of the public.

CHAPTER XI.

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN

William Jennings Bryan is of a Virginia family, of Irish extraction. His father, Cyrus Lilard Bryan, was born in 1822 near Sperryville, in a portion of Culpeper County which is now Rapahannock County. Here his ancestors had lived for more than one hundred years. He removed early in life to Salem, Illinois, where his distinguished son was born. The Jennings family to which Mr. Bryan's mother belonged lived for many years in Kentucky, but moved to Illinois early in this century.

Mr. Bryan is forty years old. He was born March 19, 1860, on his father's farm, a tract of 500 acres, near Salem. Here he spent the first ten years of his life. At ten he entered the public school of Salem, where he remained in attendance for five years, doing his work faithfully, but without distinguishing himself especially for scholarship. His special interest was in literary work and the debating society, where he shone seemingly without effort.

During this period of his life Mr. Bryan entertained for a time a boyish ambition to be a preacher, but this he soon gave over, and in its place formed a determination to become a lawyer "like father." This purpose, which was never abandoned, shaped all his subsequent education.

From that time

In 1872 Mr. Bryan's father made the campaign for representative in Congress from his district on the Democratic ticket. This was the occasion of the young man's first political awakening. he cherished the thought of entering public life as soon as he should have won reputation and a competency at the bar. As it befell an unexpected opportunity came to him twelve years later, in 1890, when at the age of thirty he made his first campaign for Congress.

Mr. Bryan joined the Cumberland Presbyterian Church at the age of fourteen. Later he affiliated with the First Presbyterian Church of Jacksonville, Illinois, and upon his removal to Nebraska with the First Presbyterian Church of Lincoln, to which he and his family now belong. His religious views belong of course to his private life, but the following extract from a eulogy which he delivered in Congress upon the memory of a deceased colleague may appropriately be set down here both as re

vealing his views on immortality and as an example of his mature English style:

"I shall not believe that even now his light is extinguished. If the Father deigns to touch with divine power the cold and pulseless heart of the buried acorn and make it burst forth from its prison walls, will He leave neglected in the earth the soul of man which was made in the image of His Creator? If he stoops to give to the rosebush, whose withered blossoms float upon the breeze the sweet assurance of another springtime, will He withhold the words of hope from the sons of men when the frosts of winter come? If Matter, mute and inanimate, though changed by the forces of Nature to a multitude of forms, can never die, will the imperial Spirit of man suffer annihilation after it has paid a brief visit, like a royal guest, to this tenement of clay?

"Rather let us believe that He, who in His apparent prodigality wastes not the rain-drop, the blade of grass or the evening's sighing zephyr, but makes them all to carry out His eternal plans, has given immortality to the mortal and gathered to Himself the generous spirit of our friend."

The eight years from fifteen to twenty-three were an important period in the young man's life. They were spent in school and collegefirst at Whipple Academy, the preparatory department of Illinois College, Jacksonville, and then in the college itself. His vacations he spent at home on the farm in the healthy pursuits of a vigorous youth, but for these eight years he led the life of a student. Six of them were spent in Jacksonville in the home of Dr. Hiram K. Jones, a relative. The influence of this life had its influence upon the growing boy. Dr. Jones is a man of strong character, scholarly tastes and high ideals. During the existence of the Concord School he was a lecturer there upon Platonic Philosophy. His wife, also, was a woman of rare attainments and as the pair had no children, they gave to young Bryan a heme in the full extent of the word.

He grum

Bryan's parents wished him to take a classical course. bled somewhat at his Latin and Greek, though he has since recognized the wisdom of his parents' choice. Latin was his favorite, but he had a strong preference for mathematics, especially for geometry, and he still believes that the mental discipline acquired in the study of this science has been useful to him in argument. He was also an earnest student of the "dismal science”-political economy. An incident which