The Socialist Block and the City Council Tax Fight

We do not expect always to agree with our socialist members in the city council. We expect them occasionally to make what we consider blunders. We believe they committed one blunder over the commission charter fight. It would be very strange did they not get off wrong once in a while. Absolute fairness, however, compels us to state the belief that in the great majority of matters coming up before the council for consideration the socialists will be found very nearly expressing the hopes and desires of the masses of the people. The first real test of the present city council came over the proposed corporation tax measure. It appears to us that the issue was very plain. The people give public service franchises their real value. A public utility corporation performs no real function in society that the people themselves cannot perform. The corporations failed to show that such a tax would seriously hamper them. The sum and substance of their argument was a thinly-veiled threat to cram down the throat of the consumer the amount of the tax in increased rates. That is a threat the corporations may make whenever the public chooses to regulate public utilities. It should have no effect on a legislative body seeking to establish the principle that the public has a right to place restrictions upon a public service corporation doing business upon sufferance of the public. We saw what we expected to see: the socialist councilmen standing for the right of the people to equalize the burden of taxation by making the utilities pay their proportion with the remaining four councilmen lined up with the corporations.