They favor development by private capital and not
by the Government, but they also favor attaching such reasonable
conditions to the right to develop as will protect the public and
control water-power monopoly in the public interest, while at the same
time giving to enterprising capital its just and full reward. They
believe that to grant rights to water power in perpetuity is a wrongful
mortgage of the welfare of our descendants, and to grant them without
insisting on some return for value received is to rob ourselves.
I believe in dividends for the people as well as taxes. Fifty years is
long enough for the certainty of profitable investment in water power,
and to fix on the amount of return that will be fair to the public and
the corporation is not impossible. What city does not regret some
ill-considered franchise? And why should not the Nation profit by the
experience of its citizens?
There is no reason why the water-power interests should be given the
people's property freely and forever except that they would like to have
it that way. I suspect that the mere wishes of the special interests,
although they have been the mainspring of much public action for many
years, have begun to lose their compelling power.
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