Life — February 15, 1906 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

E hope that be- fore President Roosevelt goes out of office he will appoint the State of New York guardian ad litem for the States of New Jersey, Dela- ware, West Vir- ginia and some other States to advise with them and regu- late their taining to the incorporation of com panies securities are to be dealt in in the city and State of New York. New York State, when flat- tered by this evidence of the Presi- action as to matters per whose dent's confidence, will doubtless feel constrained to better such of its own laws as relate to the power of its stocks already home cor- own corporations to issue and bonds. Massachusetts limits the power porations to diffuse a lars of its + volume than warrants, and protection the pub- of these evidences of hope their actual property in so doing ves some to investors, as well as te lic which some of the corporations serve, The now anent the proposition to merge all the traction York, with an 000,000 of stock. It seeks its value of any subject is to the fore just companies in New increase of $108.- their capital y that that the securities water to does not do to s. water level and concern’s will decrease in exact proportion to the volume of them. Strong concerns try hard to pay dividends on their stock, and many of them succeed The complaint about the intended over-capitalization of the New York street railroads is that the dividends water poured into watered -LIFE- on the new securities will be paid at the cost of the public by giving cheaper and worse service to the folks wh> ride in the cars UE basis for this expectation is ready plain to be seen by anyone who has eyes. Take the single in- cident of smoking on the street cars. All the companies have rules against it. No-smoking notices are con- spicuous on car. But the not enforced. Every wo- every rules are man who gets on or off a surface car in the busier hours has to force her way through a gang of cigar, pipe and cigarette smoking men on the rear platform. More men bring half-smoked cigars into the vilify the air their stinking So fuming cigars are car- ried into the elevated and the Subway, of passengers. The responsible of cers of the traction companies must he aware of this smoking nuisance— unless indeed every man of them is rich that his automobile takes him everywhere—but they let it go on, It is troublesome to pre- with fumes. cars of the to the annoyance ow so vent it, and what is troublesome is To rout out the smokers nd fumers and police the properly would require abler con- ductors and trainmen than the com- panies pay. It is cheaper, as well as easier, to let the smokers alone, and them to be nuisance to the other passen- gers, crowd the rear plat expensive, cars would want to allow and to forms so that it is as much as a wo- man’s clothes are worth to get on or off. Running in that eaves a larger vol- ume of net profit from this enor- mously crowded street cars fashion profitable traffic to be ap- plied to payment of dividends on a capital enormously inflated and to be increased by $18,000,000 of additional water. The people took risks, and did a good picce of work. They are entitled to make money out of it. But nobody is entitled to starve the service and let it go nasty in order to pay profits on an uncon- scionable deluge of water. already Interborough HY do the newspapers and so many of their readers who ought to know better, talk nonsense periodically about the — possibility that President Roosevelt will run for President in 1908? What Mr. Jacob Riis was thinking about when he lately made this suggestion we cannot imagine. Jacob's heart is in some particulars better than his head, and he can afford to have it so, for his heart is very wise and effectual. But he ought to recog: nize, as everyone should, that the President, of his own volition, has passed a gentleman's word that he will not be his own successor and that he could not, even if he wished, violate his purpose so proclaimed without loss of honorable standing among men, What his reasons were for declining a four ve never fully un- derstood, but that they were satis- factory to him a year ago, and are now, and will be binding on him whether satisfactory or not in 1908, we have never doubted for an in- stant. If he does not get tired be- iore 1909 of being the government, and is rich enough to afford an ex pensive luxury, he would make very Senator from York. At any rate, it is much more profitable to speculate on what he will do next, than to spend any men- tal energy in contemplation of the chances that he will not keep his word, SE," MERICAD to have nomination ars ahead we proper imperialism petered clean ont Persons who were wont to be sane on that subject are still sane, and persons who lately were crazy about it have, for the most part, come right again, or become indif- ferent. The cure has come high— $1,000,000,000 or so—but it promises to be effectual, Senator Beveridge got special treatment, self-inflicted. He published The Russtan Advance just before the Russo-Japanese War. seems comicbooks.com