Excerpt from Municipal Franchises, Vol. 1 of 2: A Description of the Terms and Conditions Upon Which Private Corporations Enjoy Special Privileges in the Streets of American Cities The city has been rightly called the battleground of democracy. It is in these mobile centers of population, where great issues can be fought out at short range and with a keen appreciation of their importance, that the political future of the country is to be determined. Municipal franchises are the concrete, definite points of contact between large public and large private interests. While franchise ordinances and contracts are generally technical, and often elaborate and hard to understand, yet the interest of the people in the terms and conditions of franchises is immediate and supreme. Franchises have been regarded as special privileges granted by the government to particular individuals or companies to be exploited for private profit. They are coming to be regarded, however, not so much as privileges, but rather as functions delegated to private individuals to be performed for the furtherance of the public welfare and subject to public control. It is astonishing that this subject has not been made before now the theme of many comprehensive books. It is a fact, however, that the field is practically new so far as bookmaking is concerned. There are, of course, numberless magazine articles and many special reports, as well as a few books, on the question of municipal as against private ownership of public utilities. Books have also been written on the law of franchises. But so far as the writer knows, this volume is the first one to be published having for its subject the analysis and description of municipal franchises as they exist in actual operation in the cities of America. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.