Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 24, 2025
The menace to property here, with the increasing bulk of legislation, comes in the number of new uses, not only directly for the State or for cities and towns, but for public-service corporations, or often other private corporations, and associations of persons, who are permitted by legislation to take land under eminent domain, or, what is often worse, to acquire easements over it.
It would make possible advantageous dealings with public-service corporations. It would make possible the immediate removal of an unfaithful official. It would tend to interest the citizens intelligently in municipal affairs. It has worked well wherever it has been tried. On the negative side the following points might be urged: 1.
The most insidious form of the bounty, however, is that of exemption from taxation, or, still worse, granting subsidies or subscribing to the stock and bonds of public-service, or even ordinary private, corporations. Undoubtedly the exception has been established in the case of railroads.
The new "Business" Corporation Act of 1903 makes the express distinction between public-service corporations and all other private corporations for gain: it applies to "all corporations ... established for the purpose of carrying on business for profit ... but not to ... railroad or street railway company, telegraph or telephone company, gas or electric light, heat or power company, canal, aqueduct or water company, cemetery or crematory company, or to any other corporations which now have or may hereafter have the right to take or condemn land or to exercise franchises in public ways granted by the commonwealth or by any county, city, or town."
This was justified on the ground that any such radical change as that involved in the introduction of a public-service commission might disturb the peace and well-being of corporations with franchises which still had years to run. Senator Southack saw nothing very wrong with this idea, though he naturally perceived what it was all about and whom it was truly designed to protect.
His fondest hope, at the time he conceived the brilliant idea, was that Henry would show the telegram to his father and thus inculcate in the old gentleman a friendly feeling toward the N. C. O. not unmixed with pleasurable anticipations of the day when Henry Poundstone, Junior, should be one of the most highly prized members of the legal staff of a public-service corporation.
Coming, therefore, to public work, we use this phrase for all labor contributed directly to the State, to any county, city, town, village, or municipality thereof, to any municipal-owned public-service corporation, gas, water, etc., company, or, finally, and most important, to or under any contractor for the same, or any of them.
As to public-service corporations, both the legislation and the principle on which it rests are, of course, quite different. There is no serious difference of opinion that the stock should be paid up in actual money at par nor that dividends at the expense of the public should not be paid on watered stock. More and more the States are putting this sort of legislation into effect.
The thing to do is to pass a blanket bill, providing that any public-service corporation whose charter antedates a certain period may extend its line within certain limits and under certain conditions, and so on. I think that I can draw a bill that will go through before anybody has an idea what it's about." "Very good," said Price. "Do it that way." And so they went, from point to point.
I intend to prove it with railways and public-service corporations not for my personal satisfaction and not for the money that may be earned. Poverty cannot be abolished by formula; it can be abolished only by hard and intelligent work. We are, in effect, an experimental station to prove a principle. That we do make money is only further proof that we are right.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking