Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, August 31, 1902, Page 26

BIRMINGHAM'S TOWN HALL. (Copyright, 1802, by Frank G. Carpenter.) RMINGHAM, England, Aug. 21.— (Special Correspondence of The Bee.)—~How would you like to have a street car ride for a cent? You can get it in Sheffield, where the city owns the tramways and charges different rates, according to dis- tance. I rode from one end of the town to the other for a penny and my short rides as a rule cost me a halfpenny. The car fares in Liverpool dre a penny or 2 cents for the ordinary trip and it is the same in Manchester. The rates are not difterent in old Chester, which was a town in the days of the Romans and about the same in the college town of old Oxford. In Glasgow the municipality owns the trams and charges 1 cent a mile, or 6 cents for six miles. Belfast charges 6 cents for five miles. Liverpool 1 cent a mile and Man- chester 2 cents per mile. There are many of our American cities in which you can ride ten miles for a nickel, which is equal to half a cent a mile, but as the most of our street car rides are short, the British on the average pay much less than we do in the United States. The cars are mostly double-deckers, with geats below and also on the roof, high above which are the wires of the trolley. You ride as high up In the air as though you were on the top of an elephant, but it is delightful, although the cars do not go half as fast as our own. The tramways are rapidly increasing In QGreat Britain and the tendency is en- tirely toward city ownership. A score of different municipalities are now negotiat- ing for the purchase of street cars or are laying down new lines. Many cities own the tramways and lease them out to com- panies who manage them. In nearly every case the municipal tramways pay a profit, thus reducing the tax rate. Citles Which Do Thelr Own Business. 1 have already written something as to how the British citles are managing their own business. Manchester Is making about $400,000 out of its gas works, electric lights and markets, The markets bring it an income of $85,000 & year, and at the same time give the best facilities to the people. The markets have a big cold storage plant and freezing chambers con- nected with them. As I rode down the Manchester ship canal I went by the abbutoirs, which belong to the ecity. They have wharves and bulldings for the ac- commodation of a thousand head of cat- ile and one thousand sheep. There are slaughter houses and chilling chambers adjoining them in which twelve hundred sides of beef can be chilled in twenty- four hours. . Manchester now has its own telephone system, Jbelonging to the city, in which the hello girls are city clerks. Glasgow owns its telephones and charges 2 cents A call or gives you an unlimited number of calls for $26 a year. Liverpool, Nottingham, Hull, Leicester and & half dozen other cities are now thinking of buying up the telephones or of establishing telephone systems run by the city. I spent some time in the Sheffield mar- kets during my stay there. These recently belonged to the duke of Norfolk, who etill owns & large part of the city, but the gov- ernment bought them at a big price and is now running them at a profit. London has control over & part of its markets, although the big vegetable and fruit mar- kets of Covent Garden still belong to the duke of Bedford. Bolton owns its markets and also the street cars, gas works, elec- tric lights and tramways. . Homes for the Working People. There are five towns In England which turned into their tax funds $260,000 last year as the prefit of their municipal under- takings and. the extent of such undertak- ings is steadily increasing. I have told you how the Manchester corporation bor- rowed $26,000,000 to loan to the Manches- ter Ship Canal company, and how Laver- English Cities Which Manage Their Own Business ONE OF BIRMINGHAM'S NEW STREETS. pool is making a profit out of its invest- ment of more than $100,000,000 in docks. Many of the city corporations are now erecting homes for their working people. They are buying up the slums and tearing down the buildings which stand upon them in order to put up sanitary tenements, which they rent at low rates. At the same time they are widening the streets and go- ing into what might be called a land office and real estate business. The London county council spent $1,250,000 to wipe out the slums of Bethnal Green, it being esti- mated that it cost the city $1,600 for every family that was there turned out before a cent was spent on the mew bulldings for them. London now has a special housing department connected with the eity govern- ment, which has charge of such matters. It has 60,000 people in its tenements in the city and it is erecting cottage settlements on the outskirts. Six thousand people are to be housed In such cottages at Norbury and 42,000 at Tottenham. When the Tot- tenham improvements are completed there will be a good-sized town there made up entirely of municipal cottages. The tenements which have been put within these cities have a large number in one bullding. They are, as it were, flats of two or more rooms, rented at different prices, according to the number of rooms. The cheapest two-roomed flats are to be found in Dublin, where they rent for 50 cents a week; similar quarters in Glasgow cost 80 cents a week; in Liverpool, 85 cents, and in London a little more than $1 per week. The rents are suppcsed to be on a basis that will pay the running expenses and furnish a sioking fund which will re- coup the city for the cost of the bulldings within from 50 to 100 years. What Birmingham Ownas. This city eof Birmingham, where I am now writing, has been noted for such ex- perments. It has erected one set of bulld- ings at & cost of $100,000 which have lodg- ings for 100 familles. There are shops on thé ground floor, with tenements above them, The first of these structures was finished in September, 1890, and was al once rented to respectable people at $1.25 per flat per week. Since then cheaper flat buildings have been erected, some of the rents being as low as 756 cents per week. Birmingham is noted for the number of things whi¢h the city owns. It prides it- self on being a business city run by busi- ness men on business principles. It makes its own gas, provides its own water supply and has public museums, art schools and galleries. It has extemsive parks, cricket flelds and other pleasure grounds. It has a sewage farm of 1,200 acres, which cost $2,000,000. It has public swimming and Turkish baths, and laundries for the poor, where they can have hot water and hot irons for 2 or 3 cents an hour. It has magnificent ecity buildings. - The council house or the municipal building is one of the finest structures of England. It is a great plle built in the renalssance style in the heart of the city, with a dome rising from its center. The main entrance is at the front, and the building is orna. mented with sculpture and mosaic showing the arts and Industries of Birm'ngham, with a centra] group representing Britannia reviewing its manufactures. The interior of the bullding contains a council chamber, the banqueting hall and magnificent quarters for the lord mayor. In it there is also a museum and art gal- lery and the varicvs city offices. Another fine building is the town hall, designed after the model of a Roman tem- ple. This is where public meetings are held and where the great city organ plays regularly every week for the benefit of the people. Right pack of this hall is perhaps the only monument ever erected as memorial to & lving man. It is that of Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, who has perhaps done more than any other to advance municipal ownership in the city of Birmingham. The monument bears a medallion bust of Mr. Chamberlain without the eyeglass, and upon it there is an inscription testifying to his services for Birmingham. Old Birmingham, Indeed, the city of Birmingham has been recreated by Mr. Chamberlain and his as- soclates within the past generation. Before I describe it let me tell you something of the Birmingham of the past. The town has for centuries been the industrial capi- tal of middle England. It is situated where was once the forest of Arden, the scene of Robin Hood's adventures and of “As You Like It"” and others of Shakespeare's plays. It has iron mines and coal mines not far away and before coal was used for smelt- ing iron the people here made charcoal from the trees of the forest and thus worked their blacksmith shops and other house industries. No one knows when the iron making be- gan and today there is a vast amount of work that goes on in small factories. The city is now perhaps the chief hardware center of the whole world. It has foundries and shops for making steam engines, heavy machinery and cannon. ‘It makes pins and needles by the tens of millions and steel pens and buttons for all parts of the globe. It has glass works and crystal works, bronze foundries and bridge works, and its gun works are of enormous size. There are 100,000 factory hands In the city and it is estimated that 10,000 of these are employed in making guns and rifles. The guns are exported to all countries. The works were pushed to their full capacity during our civil war, when 770,000 guns were shipped to the United States, including a large number which went to help the south. Birmingham of Today. The Birmingham of today is about as large as St. Louls. It has one or two streets as fine as the better streets of St. Louls, and indeed it looks much more like an American city than an English one. The streets are well kept and notwithstanding the foundries and factories which are scattered here and there upon them everything is remarkably clean. Birmingham has been called the town of two great streets. Its chief business houses are on these streets, and the buildings have all been put up within the last few years. They are the product of Birmingham’s prin- ciple of municipal improvement. When Joseph Chamberlain was mayor the business of the town was congested. There were slums In its heart; and it was Chamberlain who planned to wipe the slums out, to bulld & great street through them, which should OF BIRMINGHAM. be known as Corporation street, or, in sh to practically rebuild the business par the city. This undertaking was begw 1875 and $8,000,000 was borrowed to ¢ it out. Inasmuch as the money was ne at once and it would take time to get a) of Parliament authorizing the city to bonds, Joseph Chamberlain offered to vance $50,000 to the city for the pur other Birmingham capitalists did like though in smaller sums, and the work immediately begun. The property was demned and bought, the old houses down and the land leased on seventy year leases for the putting up of new b ings. The leases were so worded th: the end of the seventy-five years the ings upon the land ghould revert to the 80 that eventually the Birmingham cor} tion will practically own the best part o municipality, and it will then probab: the richest city of the world. The hc of the leases now pay a regular rent t city and magnificent structures have the places of the old slums. Birmingham Arcades. One of the features of the new buil is a system of arcades which run her: there through them from street to s. These are beautiful structures, roofed iron and glass, forming large passag containing stores as good as you wil in England. The interior walls are of and the fronts of the stores are plate These arcades are filled with shopp« the busiest times of the day, and they a promenade and visiting place for the ple. They are extremely light., Iné took some snapshot photographs them which have come out very well In my strolls about the arcades many ovidences of the American in One shop was filled with American another had tomato ketchup from Ph phia, sweet pickles and baked bean. Baltimore, and a third jars of apple from Pittsburg and canned soups fro cago. The most important sign that met as I came up from the new station junction of Corporation street ané¢ street was that of the New York I surance company, and the next saw was the American flag waving fr third story of a big pink building down the way, with the words States Consulate” on the window A little later on I walked into ti sulate and spent an hour or so the Mr. Marshall Halstead, who s Uncl consul and bus'ness representative industrial section. He was free en expressing his opinions about A trade, but said that he could not all- self to be quoted, as the Birmingh ple have become so senmsitive on ject of the American invasion that terview upon such lines would ¢ harm than good. In a City Gas Office. It was in company with Mr. Halst 1 visited the city gas office in the House to learn something about h« corporations manage their gas w. find that nearly all the cities of are now gradually buying the gas Two hundred and thirty of them ready done so, and they are exten service so that the poorest man his gas at low cost, We first entered the gas count where we found clerks taking from the consumers, and from t} on into the salesroom, where al! gas fixtures, from brackets to ¢! and from gas tips to gas stoves, The Birmingham Gas company, w trolled the business when the ci to own it, had a fixture store an poration bought this with the p prices of the fixtures are about as in the United States, but th: payment are much more lenient will sell you gas fixtures on ti (Continued on Bighth Pa,