The Detroit Times

Editorials By the People

A Prophecy Fulfilled, and a Prediction Verified.

To the Editor of The Times:

When our first franchise on Woodward-ave., from the Grand Trunk railroad crossing to Pallister-ave. expired, I wrote Wm. B. Thompson (then mayor of the city in his first term) to put in a claim of rental for use of that portion of our streets. I received an acknowledgment of the letter, thanking me for the suggestion but not saying what use he would make of it. Later, after more privileges in our streets had gone by the board, I wrote him again, saying that he ought to file a claim against the D. U. R. for use of a privilege that was now the property of the people.

To this letter he replied that they were about ready to spring the so-called Hally ordinance, which would prove a better thing for the city than a rental for use of the streets. I waited in patience until that ordinance was introduced, when, after a careful reading, I again protested that this ordinance would simply mean an interminable and costly law suit in which we were likely to lose in the end, as Mr. Lawson now says we have.

I do not remember that I got any reply to this letter of protest. I stated in it that in Mayor Pingree's time, we had paid $100,000 or more, to learn that we could not violate a contract with the street railway company; that, this ordinance did attempt such a violation; that on the court's decisions at that time, Judge Taft (now president) decided the franchise extension made to the old City railway in 1879, was invalid. But the decision on appeal by the appellate court was to the effect that, as Judge Taft had decided, the franchise was no good; but that a contract had been entered into in the extension of franchise at that time (invalid though it was) which the railway company had lived up to, and that the city must keep its part of the contract, with the result that the D. U. R. operated its cars on our main and most important streets from 1892 to 1909 on a contract and not on a franchise, and right here was where the joker in the so-called Codd-Hutchins franchise extension came in. The concessions made in 1879 for an illegal privilege, was a reduction of fare in granting the workingmen's tickets and a limited transfer privilege which the courts held were valuable concessions, and which bound the city to this unfortunate compact. In the Codd-Hutchins franchise we were told that in 1924 we could take over all these street railway properties at practically our own price, the privileges then all having expired, but here again was a contract with a fare and transfer concessions and the claims of these bondholders (and it is these bondholders who have fought this Hally ordinance at that time were some $23,000,000, and they ran to 1932, giving another chance of an eight-years' use of practically all our available car track streets on a contract. This joker, with some others, obtained in the franchise extension, Mr. Thompson, the Journal and the Free Press sought to put over on the people last January.

Now, as I said would be the case with this Hally ordinance, (and Mr. Wilbur Brotherton, Anthony Pratt, Dr. Geo. H. Sherman and several others know of my protest), we have spent many thousands of dollars in law, and lost a chance to collect many more thousands of dollars rental for the use of our streets, either because of mistakes in judgment, or a disposition to hand the D. U. R. another privilege, I leave it to the public to judge which.

S. G. HOWE.

Cleveland, O., Oct. 5, 1912.