Seattle's Streetcar Deal: Fair Terms or a Giveaway?

The city council has justified the assurance that its members, who are all good business men, do not lose their good sense when they act in their corporate capacity. They have agreed upon fair terms with the street car company seeking to keep its obligations, and can justify their action. The terms offered by the company were fair, and it was not necessary to make them harsher merely for the sake of showing a little authority or catching a little cheap applause. Delegate Little's plan has, at first glance, considerable merit, but the objection pointed out by Mr. Hunt is a cogent one. It is against unscrupulous management the city must be protected, and it is better to take a little less profit and avoid the risk of being euchred out of it. Indeed, as Alderman Cilse suggested, the city's chief interest in street car franchises is not in making a profit but in exercising such control that the public shall have good accommodations and that the service shall be improved as the increasing traffic demands. Seattle is very much concerned in getting new capital invested here; and the excellent impression the action of the council will create tends to bring that capital here. Investors very rarely discriminate between communities where business sense controls in municipal government and wherein demagogism lends encouragement to cinching and harassing. The more just and fair a council is in its dealings in such controversies the greater security the people have, too, that their representatives are honest and faithful in all matters.