“If I’d only married her!” murmured Tanquerly again.
Tanquerly shook his head slowly and painfully. “No,” he said, “not yet. But I’ll bet if I’d only married her I wouldn’t have been to that banquet last night and felt like this this morning.”
FARMER MOSSBACKER—Are ye goin’ to send your son to college, Ezry?
FARMER BENTOVER—Hod-durn him—no! He’s a reg’lar rowdy now!
_Franchise Wealth and Municipal Ownership_
There is much writing and talk about _municipal ownership_ in these days. When you talk about a municipality or an individual owning something, it implies that there is _something_ to own. It is about this “something” that I want to write. I want to make it clear to the reader what I mean by _franchise wealth_ or _franchise property_, and exactly how it differs from private wealth or private property.
When you buy a house and lot in a town or city, your property is of two kinds, private property and franchise property. Your private property begins at the building line in front and extends backward the full width of your lot to the fence or line which divides your back yard from the back yard of your neighbor who fronts on the next street. Your franchise property extends from the building or stoop line, outward, the full width of your lot, across the sidewalk and on to the middle of the street where it meets the franchise property of your neighbor on the opposite side of your street.
The money to grade, drain and pave the street in front of your lot was raised by assessments levied on that lot. These assessments were added, by previous owners, perhaps, to the cost of the lot, and were a part of the price you paid for the lot. In other words, you bought and paid for the franchise property in front of your stoop line as directly as you did for the private property behind the stoop line, and you are therefore entitled to the usufruct of the one as much as the other.
The aggregate of the franchise wealth of all the individual owners in any given street is the sum total of the franchise wealth of that street. And the aggregate of the franchise wealth of all the streets of a given town or city is the sum total of the franchise wealth of that city. And it is absolutely owned by all the inhabitants of that city, for everyone contributes in some manner to the creation and maintenance of this franchise wealth.