after another, in railway financiering, in the black
scandals of big insurance, in the looting and ruin of
New York traction companies, down to the vulgar
and colossal pilfering under the shelter of the sugar
trust, the drowsy public, like that insurance magnate,
has been driven to look at the facts.

Society created the corporation, endowed it with
extraordinary rights and privileges, and then, after
the Civil War, allowed it to run its riotous course
of irresponsibility to the public. The very types of
great organizations, like transportation and city mo-
nopolies, which owed everything to the public, were
permitted to act as if the properties were privately
owned like a yacht, a farm, or a pair of horses.

For nearly a generation, every attempt to assert
public rights was met, first by open contempt and
then by evasion, with the contempt more or less con-
cealed. Slowly the public is coming to its own. It
has asserted and won its rights only by observing the
disasters to its organic life and welfare. Through
sheer suffering, it has learned why city government
in the United States has sunk into such a welter of
graft and wasteful expenditure as to make us a mock-
ery among nations. It has had to learn how this
municipal failure is bound up with private business
schemes that play havoc with state and national
legislatures. It is now learning why the battle is so
fierce against the elemental duty of conserving our
national resources.

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