interfere with the foreman, and to the foreman and be told that such is the policy of the company. The union may serve as a similar buffer.
Often any individual of the series would act humanely or generously, if he were acting for himself. He cannot be humane or generous with the property of others, and hence there is no humanity or generosity in the whole system. This system seems to have reached its extreme in the creation of corporations for the express purpose of relieving employers of any personal responsibility. Companies organized to insure employers against claims made by employees on account of injuries may be regarded as a device for distributing the burden. But as the company is organized, not primarily to pay damages, as are life insurance companies, but to avoid such payment, it has a powerful motive in contesting every claim, however just, and in making it so expensive to prosecute a claim that the victims may prefer not to make the attempt.
The "law's delay" can nearly always be counted upon as a powerful defense when a poor man is plaintiff and a rich corporation is defendant.
=Relations to the Public.=--The relations of corporations to the public, and of the public to corporations, are similarly impersonal and non-moral. A convenient way of approach to this situation is offered by the ethical, or rather non-ethical, status of the various mechanical devices which have come into use in recent years for performing many economic services. The weighing machines, candy machines, telephones, are supposed to give a certain service for a penny or a nickel. But if the machine is out of order, the victim has no recourse. His own attitude is correspondingly mechanical. He regards himself as dealing, not with a person, but with a thing. If he can exploit it or "beat" it, so much the better. Now a corporation, in the attitude which it takes and evokes, is about half-way between the pure mechanism of a machine and the completely personal attitude of a moral individual. A man is overcharged, or has some other difficulty with an official of a railroad company. It is as hopeless to look for immediate relief as it is in the case of a slot machine. The conductor is just as much limited by his orders as the machine by its mechanism. The man may later correspond with some higher official, and if patience and life both persist long enough, he will probably recover. But to prevent fraud, the company is obliged to be more rigorous than a person would be who was dealing with the case in a personal fashion. Hence the individual with a just grievance is likely to entertain toward the corporation the feeling that he is dealing with a machine, not with an ethical being, even as the company's servants are not permitted to exercise any moral consideration in dealing with the public. They merely obey orders. Public sentiment, which would hold an individual teamster responsible for running over a child, or an individual stage owner responsible for reckless or careless conduct in carrying his passengers, feels only a blind rage in the case of a railroad accident. It cannot fix moral responsibility definitely upon either stockholder or management or employee, and conversely neither stockholder, nor manager, nor employee[227] feels the moral restraint which the individual would feel. He is not wholly responsible, and his share in the collective responsibility is so small as often to seem entirely negligible.
=Relations to the Law.=--The collective business enterprises, when incorporated, are regarded as "juristic persons," and so gain the support of law as well as become subject to its control. If the great corporation can thus gain the right of an individual, it can enter the field of free contract with great advantage. Labor unions have not incorporated, fearing, perhaps, to give the law control over their funds. They seek a higher standard of living, but private law does not recognize this as a right. It merely protects contracts, but leaves it to the individual to make the best contract he can. As most wage-earners have no contracts, but are liable to dismissal at any time, the unions have seen little to be gained by incorporation. They have thus missed contact with the institution in which society seeks to embody, however tardily, its moral ideas and have been, in a sense, outlaws. They were such at first by no fault of their own, for the law treated such combinations as conspiracies. And they are still at two decided disadvantages. First, the capitalistic or employing corporation acting as a single juristic person may refuse to buy the labor of a union; indeed, according to a recent decision, it cannot be forbidden to discharge its employees because of their membership in a union. As the corporation may employ scores of thousands, and be practically the only employer of a particular kind of labor, it can thus enforce a virtual boycott and prevent the union from selling its labor. It does not need to use a "blacklist" because the employers are all combined in one "person." On the other hand, the union is adjudged to act in restraint of interstate commerce if it boycotts the employing corporation. The union is here treated as a combination, not as a single person. The second point in which the employing body has greatly the legal advantage appears in the case of a strike. Men are allowed to quit work, but this is not an effective method of exerting pressure unless the employer is anxious to keep his plant in operation and can employ no one else. If he can take advantage of an open labor market and hire other workmen, the only resource of the strikers is to induce these to join their ranks.
But they have been enjoined by the courts, not only from intimidating, but even from persuading[228] employees to quit work. The method of procedure in enforcing the injunction, which enables the judge to fix the offense, eliminate trial by jury, determine the guilt, and impose any penalty he deems fit, has all the results of criminal process with none of its limitations, and forms a most effective agency against the unions. Where persuasion is enjoined it is difficult to see how a union can exert any effective pressure except in a highly skilled trade, where it can control all the labor supply. In the field of private rights and free contract, the labor unions are then at a disadvantage because they have no rights which are of any value for their purposes, except, under certain conditions, the right to refuse to work. And since this is, in most cases, a weapon that injures its wielder far more than his opponent, it is not effective.
Disappointed in the field of free contract, the labor unions seek to enlist public agency in behalf of better sanitary conditions and in prevention of child-labor, long hours for women, unfair contracts, and the like. Capitalistic corporations frequently resist this change of venue on the ground that it interferes with free contract or takes away property without "due process of law," and many laws have been set aside as unconstitutional on these grounds,[229] several of them no doubt because so drawn as to appear to be in the interest of a class, rather than in that of the public. The trend in the direction of asserting larger public control both under the police power and over corporations in whose service the public has a direct interest, will be noted later.
Against other corporations the general public or the unsuccessful competitor has sought legal aid in legislation against "trusts," but this has mainly proved to be futile. It has merely induced a change in form of organization. Nor has it been easy as yet for the law to exercise any effective control over the business corporation on any of the three principles invoked--namely: to prevent monopoly, to secure the public interest in the case of public service corporations, and to assert police power. For penalties by fine frequently fail to reach the guilty persons, and it is difficult to fix any personal responsibility.
Juries are unwilling to convict subordinate officials of acts which they believe to have been required by the policy of the higher officials, while, on the other hand, the higher officials are seldom directly cognizant of criminal acts. Gradually, however, we may believe that the law will find a way to make both capital and labor organizations respect the public welfare, and to give them support in their desirable ends. The coöperative principle cannot be outlawed; it must be more fully socialized.
§ 4. THE METHODS OF PRODUCTION, EXCHANGE, AND VALUATION =The Machine.=--The technique of production has shown a similar progress from individual to collective method. The earlier method was that of handicraft. The present method in most occupations, aside from agriculture, is that of the machine. But the great economic advantage of the machine is not only in the substitution of mechanical power for muscle; it is also in the substitution of collective for individual work. It is the machine which makes possible on a tremendously effective basis the division of labor and its social organization. The extraordinary increase in wealth during the past century depends upon these two factors. The machine itself moreover, in its enormous expansion, is not only a social tool, but a social product. The invention and discovery which gave rise to the new processes in industry of every sort were largely the outcome of scientific researches carried on at public expense to a great extent by men other than those who finally utilize their results. They become in turn the instruments for the production of wealth, which is thus doubly social in origin.
This machine process has an important bearing upon the factors of character mentioned in our analysis. It standardizes efficiency; it calls for extraordinary increase of speed; it requires great specialization of function and often calls for no knowledge of the whole process. On the other hand, it gives a certain sense of power to control and direct highly complicated machinery. In the more skilled trades there is more time and resource for intellectual, æsthetic, or social satisfactions. The association of workmen favors discussion of common interests, sympathy, and coöperation; this may evoke a readiness to sacrifice individual to group welfare, which is quite analogous to patriotic sentiment at its best, even if it is liable to such violent expressions as characterize patriotic sentiment at its worst. The association of workmen is one of the most significant features of modern industry.
=Capital and Credit.=--The technique of exchange of services and goods has undergone a transformation from an individual and limited to a collective and almost unlimited method. The earlier form of exchange and barter limited the conduct of business to a small area, and the simpler form of personal service involved either slavery or some personal control which was almost as direct. With the use of money it became possible to make available a far greater area for exchange and to accumulate capital which represented the past labors of vast numbers of individuals. With the further discovery of the possibilities of a credit system which business enterprise now employs, it is possible to utilize in any enterprise not merely the results of the labor of the past, but the anticipated income of the future. A corporation, as organized at present, issues obligations in the form of bonds and stock which represent no value as yet produced, but only the values of labor or privilege anticipated. The whole technique, therefore, of capital and credit means a collective business enterprise. It masses the work and the abilities of thousands and hundreds of thousands in the past and the future, and wields the product as an almost irresistible agency to achieve new enterprises or to drive from the field rival enterprises.
=Basis of Valuation.=--The whole basis for value and prices has also been changed. The old basis, employed for the most part through the Middle Ages in fixing the value of labor or goods, was the amount of labor and material which had been expended. The modern basis is that of supply and demand. This proceeds on the theory that it is human wants which after all give value to any product. I may have expended time and labor upon a book or carving, or in the cultivation of a new vegetable, or in the manufacture of an article for apparel, but if no one cares to read the book or look at the carving, if the vegetable is one that no one can eat, or the garment is one that no one will wear, it has no value. Starting then from this, we can see how the two elements in valuation--namely, demand and supply--are affected by social factors.
The demand for an article depends upon the market: i.e., upon how many buyers there are, and what wants they have. Modern methods of communication and transportation have made the market for goods as large as the civilized world. Education is constantly awakening new wants. The facilities for communication, for travel, and for education are constantly leading one part of the world to imitate the standards or fashions set by other parts. We have, therefore, a social standard for valuation which is constantly extending in area and in intensity.
The other factor in valuation, namely, the supply, is likewise being affected in an increasing degree by social forces. With many, if not with most, of the commodities which are of greatest importance, it has been found that there is less profit in an unrestricted supply than in a supply regulated in the interest of the producers. The great coal mines, the iron industries, the manufacturers of clothing, find it more profitable to combine and produce a limited amount. The great corporations and trusts have usually signalized their acquisition of a monopoly or an approximate control of any great field of production by shutting down part of the factories formerly engaged. The supply of labor is likewise limited by the policies of labor unions in limiting the number of apprentices allowed, or by other means of keeping the union small. Tariffs, whether in the interest of capital or of labor, are a social control of the supply. Franchises, whether of steam railroads, street transportation, gas, electric lighting, or other public utilities so-called, are all of them in the nature of monopolies granted to a certain group of individuals. Their value is dependent upon the general need of these utilities, coupled with the public limitation of supply. In many cases the services are so indispensable to the community that the servant does not need to give special care or thought to the rendering of especially efficient service. The increase in population makes the franchises enormously profitable without any corresponding increase of risk or effort on the part of the utility company.
But the most striking illustration of the creation of values by society is seen in the case of land. That an acre of land in one part of the country is worth fifty dollars, and in another part two hundred thousand dollars,[230] is not due to any difference in the soil, nor for the most part to any labor or skill or other quality of the owner. It is due to the fact that in the one case there is no social demand, whereas, in the other, the land is in the heart of a city. In certain cases, no doubt, the owner of city real estate may help by his enterprise to build up the city, but even if so this is incidental. The absentee owner profits as much by the growth of the city as the foremost contributor to that growth. The owner need not even improve the property by a building. This enormous increase in land values has been called the "unearned increment." In America it is due very largely to features of natural location and transportation. It has seemed to some writers, such as Henry George, not only a conspicuous injustice, but the root of all economic evil. It is, no doubt, in many cases, a conspicuous form of "easy money," but the principle is not different from that which is involved in nearly all departments of modern industry. The wealth of modern society is really a gigantic pool. No individual knows how much he creates; it is a social product. To estimate what any one should receive by an attempted estimate of what he has individually contributed is absolutely impossible.
§ 5. THE FACTORS WHICH AID ETHICAL RECONSTRUCTION The two distinctive features of the modern economic situation, its collective character and its impersonal character, are themselves capable of supplying valuable aid toward understanding the ethical problems and in making the reconstruction required. For _the very magnitude of modern operations and properties serves to bring out more clearly the principles involved_. _The impersonal character allows economic forces pure and simple to be seen in their moral bearings._ Publicity becomes a necessity. Just as the factories are compelled to have better light, air, and sanitation than the sweat shops, so public attention is aroused and the conscience stimulated by practices of great corporations, although these practices may be in principle precisely the same as those of private persons which escape moral reprobation. In some cases, no doubt, the very magnitude of the operation does actually change the principle. A "lift" on the road from an oldtime stage-driver, or a "special bargain" at a country store was not likely to disturb the balance of competition as a system of free passes or secret rebates may in modern business. But in other cases what the modern organizations have done is simply to exhibit the workings of competition or other economic forces _on a larger scale_. An illustration of this is seen in the familiar fact that a law passed to correct some corporate practice is often found to apply to many practices not contemplated by the makers of the law.
The effect of getting a principle out into the open and at work on a large scale is to make public judgment clear and reprobation of bad practices more effective. The impersonal factor likewise contributes powerfully to make condemnation easy. Criticism is unhampered by the considerations which complicate the situation when the conduct of an individual is in question. The individual may be a good neighbor, or a good fellow, or have had bad luck. But no one hesitates to express his opinion of a corporation, and the average jury is not biased in its favor, whatever may be true of the bench. Even the plea that the corporation includes widows and orphans among its shareholders, which is occasionally put forth to avert interference with corporate practices, usually falls on unsympathetic ears. A higher standard will be demanded for business conduct, a more rigid regard for public service will be exacted, a more moderate return for invested capital in public service, and a more liberal treatment of employees will be insisted upon from corporations than from private individuals. Nor does the organization of labor escape the same law. When an agent of a union has been detected in calling a strike for private gain, public sentiment has been as severe in condemnation as in the case of corporate officials who have profited at the expense of stockholders.
=Summary.=--We may summarize some of the chief points brought out by our analysis. Modern technique has increased enormously the productivity of labor, but has increased its dangers to health and life, and to some extent diminished its educating and moralizing values. The impersonal agencies give vast power, but make responsibility difficult to locate.
The collective agencies and the social contributions make the economic process a great social pool. Men put in manual labor, skill, capital.
Some of it they have inherited from their kin; some they have inherited from the inventors and scientists who have devised tools and processes; some they have wrought themselves. This pooling of effort is possible because of good government and institutions which were created by statesmen, patriots, and reformers, and are maintained by similar agencies. The pool is immensely productive. But no one can say just how much his contribution earns. Shall every one keep what he can get? Shall all share alike? Or shall there be other rules for division--either made and enforced by society or made by the individual and enforced by his own conscience? Are our present rules adequate to such a situation as that of the present? These are some of the difficult questions that modern conditions are pressing upon the man who thinks.
LITERATURE Besides the classic treatises of Adam Smith, J. S. Mill, and Karl Marx, which are important for the relation of the economic to the whole social order during the past century, the following recent works in the general field give especial prominence to the ethical problems involved: Clark, _Essentials of Economic Theory as Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy_, 1907; George, _Progress and Poverty_, 1879; Schmoller, _Grundriss der allgemeinen Staatswirtschaftslehre_, 1900-04; Bonar, _Philosophy and Political Economy_, 1893; Hobson, _The Social ON MODERN BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY: Veblen, _The Theory of Business _Evolution of Modern Capitalism_, 1894; Toynbee, _The Industrial Webb, _History of Trade Unionism_, 1894, _Problems of Modern Industry_, 1903; Ely, _The Labor Movement in America_, 1886; Hollander and Barnett, _Studies in American Trades Unionism_, 1907; Henderson, _Social FOOTNOTES: [224] _Republic_, 550. Davies and Vaughan.
[225] E.g., in a strike there is sometimes a toleration by public sentiment of a certain amount of violence where it is believed that there is no legal remedy for unfair conditions.
[226] Recent elections in the great insurance companies have shown this.
attention to the influence of the union in shielding individuals from the penalties of carelessness.
[228] Recent Illinois decisions (216 Ill., 358 f., and especially 232 Ill., 431-440) uphold sweeping injunctions against persuasion, no matter how peaceable. "Lawful competition, which may injure the business of a person, even though successfully directed to driving him out of business, is not actionable." But for a union to hire laborers away from an employer by money or transportation is not "lawful competition." The object is assumed by the court to be malicious, i.e., the injury of the employer. The court does not entertain the possibility that to obtain an eight-hour day is as lawful an aim for the labor union as to acquire property is for an employer. The decision shows clearly the difference in legal attitude toward pressure exerted by business corporations for the familiar end of acquisition, and that exerted by the union for the novel end of a standard of living. The court regards the injury to others as incidental in the former, but as primary and therefore as malicious in the latter. It may be that future generations will regard this judicial psychology somewhat as we regard some of the cases cited above, ch. xxi. Other courts have not always taken this view, and have permitted persuasion unless it is employed in such a manner or under such circumstances as to "operate on fears rather than upon their judgments or their sympathies" (17., _N. Y. Supp._, 264). For other on Combinations_.
[229] The list appended was bulletined at the Chicago Industrial Exhibit of 1906, and reprinted in _Charities and The Commons_.
"What 'Freedom of Contract' has Meant to Labor: 1. Denial of eight-hour law for women in Illinois.
2. Denial of eight-hour law for city labor or for mechanics and ordinary laborers.
3. Denial of ten-hour law for bakers.
4. Inability to prohibit tenement labor.
5. Inability to prevent by law employer from requiring employee as condition of securing work, to assume all risk from injury while at work.
6. Inability to prohibit employer selling goods to employees at greater profit than to non-employees.
7. Inability to prohibit mine owners screening coal which is mined by weight before crediting same to employees as basis of wages.
8. Inability to legislate against employer using coercion to prevent employee becoming a member of a labor union.
9. Inability to restrict employer in making deductions from wages of employees.
10. Inability to compel by law payment of wages at regular intervals.
12. Inability to provide by law that laborers on public works shall be paid prevailing rate of wages.
13. Inability to compel by law payment of extra compensation for overtime.
14. Inability to prevent by law employer from holding back part of wages.
15. Inability to compel payment of wages in cash; so that employer may pay in truck or scrip not redeemable in lawful money.
16. Inability to forbid alien labor on municipal contracts.
17. Inability to secure by law union label on city printing."
Labor representatives speak of "the ironic manner in which the courts guarantee to workers: The right to be maimed and killed without liability to the employer; the right to be discharged for belonging to a union; the right to work as many hours as employers please and under any considerations which they may impose." The "irony" is, of course, not intended by the courts. It is the irony inherent in a situation when rules designed to secure justice become futile, if not a positive cause of injustice, because of changed conditions.
[230] In Greater New York. An acre on Manhattan Island is of course worth much more. The Report of the New York Tax Department for 1907 is very suggestive.
CHAPTER XXIII SOME PRINCIPLES IN THE ECONOMIC ORDER Certain problems suggested by the foregoing analysis are unsettled, for the issues are so involved, and in some cases, both the facts and their interpretations are so much in controversy, that we cannot yet formulate sure moral judgments. On the other hand, certain principles emerge with a good degree of clearness. We state some of the more obvious.
=1. Wealth and Property are Subordinate in Importance to Personality.=--The life is more than meat. Most agree to this, stated abstractly, but many fail to make the application. They may sacrifice their own health, or human sympathy, or family life; or they may consent to this actively or passively as employers, or consumers, or citizens, in the case of others. A civilization which loses life in providing the means to live is not highly moral. A society which can afford luxuries for some cannot easily justify unhealthful conditions of production, or lack of general education. An individual who gratifies a single appetite at the expense of vitality and efficiency is immoral. A society which considers wealth or property as ultimate, whether under a conception of "natural rights" or otherwise, is setting the means above the end, and is therefore unmoral or immoral.
=2. Wealth Should Depend on Activity.=--The highest aspect of life on its individual side is found in active and resolute achievement, in the embodying of purpose in action. Thought, discovery, creation, mark a higher value than the satisfaction of wants, or the amassing of goods.
If the latter is to be a help it must stimulate activity, not deaden it.
Inherited wealth without any accompanying incitement from education or class feeling or public opinion would be a questionable institution from this point of view. Veblen in his _Theory of the Leisure Class_ points out various forms of degeneration that may attend upon leisure, when leisure means not merely release from mechanical labor in the interest of more intellectual activity, but a relinquishing of all serious labor.
As the race has made its ascent in the presence of an environment which has constantly selected the more active persons, society in its institutions and consciously directed processes may well plan to keep this balance between activity and reward. Modern charity has adopted this principle. We fear to pauperize by giving aid to the poor unless we can provide some form of self-help. But in its treatment of the rich, society is not solicitous. Our provisions for inheritance of property undoubtedly pauperize a certain proportion of those who inherit. Whether this can be prevented without interfering with motives to activity on the part of those who acquire the property, or whether the rich thus pauperized are not as well worth saving to society as the poor, will undoubtedly become more pressing problems as the number of inheritors increases, and society recognizes that it may have a duty to its idle rich as well as to its idle poor.
=3. Public Service Should Go Along with Wealth.=--Note that we do not say, "wealth should be proportionate to public service." This would take us at once into the controversy between the individualist and the socialist which we shall consider later among the unsettled problems.
The individualist, as represented, for example, by Herbert Spencer, would say that except for the young, the aged, or the sick, reward should be proportioned to merit. The socialist, on the other hand, is more inclined to say, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." In either case, it is assumed that there should be public service. Leaving for later consideration the question whether we can fix any quantitative rule, let us notice at this time why some service is a fundamental moral principle.
Such service in the form of some economically useful contribution, whether to the production and distribution of goods, to the public order, to education, to the satisfaction of æsthetic and religious wants, might be demanded as a matter of common honesty. This would be to treat it as a just claim made by society upon each of its members. There is, of course, no legal claim. The law is far from adopting as a universal maxim, "If any man will not work, neither let him eat."
Vagrancy is not a term applied to all idlers. It is sufficient for the law if some of a man's ancestors obtained possession and title by service, or force, or gift. Modern law, in its zeal to strengthen the institution of property, releases all the owner's posterity forever from the necessity of any useful service. The old theology used to carry the conception of inherited or imputed sin and merit to extremes which modern individualism rejects. But the law--at least in the United States--permits a perpetual descent of inherited property; i.e., of inherited permission to receive from society without rendering any personal return. Theologically and morally, however, the man of to-day repudiates any conception which would reduce him to a shadow of another.
He wishes to stand on his own feet, to be rewarded or blamed according to his own acts, not because of a deed of some one else. To follow out this principle in the economic sphere would require that every man who receives aught from others should feel in duty bound to render some service. Merely "to have been born" is hardly sufficient in a democratic society, however munificent a contribution to the social weal the French aristocrat may have felt this to be.
But it is only one aspect of the case to say that society may claim service as a just due. There is another aspect--what this service means to the person himself. It is his opportunity to fulfill his function in the social organism. Now a person is as large as his purpose and will.
The person, therefore, who identifies his purposes with the welfare of the public is thereby identifying himself with the whole social body. He is no longer himself alone; he is a social power. Not only the leader of society, but every efficient servant makes himself an organ through which society itself acts and moves forward. This is perhaps most conspicuous in the case of the great inventors or organizers of industry and society. By serving civilization they have become its bearers and have thus shared its highest pulses. But it is true of every laborer. As he is an active contributor he becomes creative, not merely receptive.
=4. The Change from Individual to Collective Methods, of Industry and Business Demands a Change from Individual to Collective Types of Morality.=--Moral action is either to accomplish some positive good or to hinder some wrong or evil. But under present conditions the individual by himself is practically helpless and useless for either purpose. It was formerly possible for a man to set a high standard and live up to it, irrespective of the practice or coöperation of others.
When a seller's market was limited to his acquaintance or a limited territory, it might well be that honesty or even fair dealing was the best policy. But with the changes that have come in business conditions the worse practices, like a baser coinage, tend to drive out the morally better. This may not apply so thoroughly to the relations between seller and buyer, but it applies to many aspects of trade. A merchant may desire to pay his women clerks wages on which they can support life without selling their souls. But if his rival across the street pays only half the wage necessary for subsistence, it is evident the former is in so far at a disadvantage. Extend the same policy. Let the former have his goods made under good conditions and the latter have no scruple against "sweating"; let the former pay taxes on an honest estimate and the latter "see" the assessor, or threaten to move out of town if he is assessed for more than a figure named by himself; let the former ask only for a fair chance, while the latter secures legislation that favors his own interests, or gets specifications for bids worded so that they will exclude his opponents, or in selling to public bodies "fixes" the councils or school committees, or obtains illegal favors in transportation. Let this continue, and how long will the former stay in the field? Even as regards quality of goods, where it would seem more plausible that honest dealing might succeed, experience has shown that this depends on whether the frauds can be easily detected. In the case of drugs and goods where the adulterations cannot be readily discovered, there is nothing to offset the more economical procedure of the fraudulent dealer. The fact that it is so difficult to procure pure drugs and pure food would seem to be most plausibly due to the fatal competition of the adulterated article.
Or, suppose a person has a little property invested in some one of the various corporations which offer the most convenient method for placing small sums as well as large. This railroad defies the government by owning coal mines as well as transporting the product; that public service corporation has obtained its franchise by bribery; this