Then Mr. Cornell Schreiber, the City Solicitor, hit upon a plan. He drew an ordinance providing that the company could use the streets wherein its rights had expired, only on the condition that it carry passengers at a three-cent fare, and the ordinance was at once passed by the council. It was of doubtful legality, but it had its effect in a world 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 had come over the spirit of the people, and this change had been reflected in the laws. The greatest difficulty had been found in the city’s want of autonomy; the cities of Ohio not only lacked the power to own and operate public utilities, but they even had few rights in contracting with the private companies. The street-car companies had always been more ably and assiduously represented in the state legislature than had the people themselves; the people had not had the strength to wrest these powers from the legislature, and indeed, in their patience and toryism, they had not made many efforts to do so. Thus our campaign led us out into the state, and the end, toward which we had to struggle, was the free city; the last of our demands was home rule. In the relations between public utility corporations and the municipality, our cities were a whole generation behind the cities of Great Britain, Germany, France and Belgium. Indeed, in relation to all social functions we were not much further advanced than was Rome in the second century.