of human beings. Before it was effective even, people were tendering three cents as fare; and in the face of the difficulty of dealing with a whole populace in this mood, the company agreed to put in force a temporary rate of three cents during the rush hours of the morning and evening, and it lowered fares in the other hours and made further concessions. And there we let the matter rest.
And, since the education of the general mind never stops, the people were learning. Their patience was time and again exhausted by the unavoidable length of the franchise dispute, for the problem was to them, as to most Americans, new, the legal questions in which the whole subject was prolific had not been settled, there was the interruption of business and convenience and pleasure attending long continued negotiations, and perhaps more than all that irritation of the public temper which proceeds from all communal disputes. The company's representatives counted on all this to tire the people out; and since the controversy assumed a political complexion, and there was as always the difficulty of sustaining the mass will, they had hopes that by delay the people in weariness would surrender. The time came when the sentiment in favor of municipal ownership was so strong that the Independents adopted the view I had expressed and declared it to be their purpose to grant no renewals of franchises at all, but to let the company operate on sufferance until the city itself could take over the lines.
During the course of the long struggle a change
