Law of municipal condemnation in Maryland - Primary Source Edition
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
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Law of Municipal Condemnation in Maryland (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Law of Municipal Condemnation in Maryland
A...)
Excerpt from Law of Municipal Condemnation in Maryland
Assembly shall enact no law authorizing private property to be taken for public use, without just compensation, as agreed on between the parties, or awarded by a Jury, being first paid or tendered to the party entitled to such compensation. This power to take private property for public use is known as the power Of eminent domain.
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Albert Cabell Ritchie was an American lawyer and politician. A Democrat, he was the 49th Governor of Maryland from 1920 to 1935.
Background
Albert Cabell Ritchie was born on August 29, 1876 in Richmond, Virginia, of Maryland and Virginia stock, the only child of Judge Albert Ritchie of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City and Elizabeth Caskie (Cabell) Ritchie. On his father's side he was descended from a mid-eighteenth-century Scottish settler in Frederick County, Maryland. The Cabell family had come from England to Virginia, where for seven generations they had participated vigorously in public life; Ritchie's great-grandfather, William H. Cabell, was a governor of Virginia, and a great-great-uncle, Joseph Carrington Cabell, aided in founding the University of Virginia. Thus on both sides of Ritchie's family there were leanings toward the law and public administration.
Education
Save for his earliest weeks in the old Cabell mansion in Richmond, he was a lifelong Marylander, receiving his education in private schools in Baltimore, in the Johns Hopkins University (A. B. , 1896), and in the law school of the University of Maryland (LL. B. , 1898).
Career
Ritchie went straight from law school to a remunerative private practice, but he was always drawn to public service. In 1903 he became an assistant city solicitor of Baltimore and in 1910 assistant general counsel (People's Counsel) for the state Public Service Commission - that is, protector of the public interest in utility matters. In that office he immediately applied his remarkable industry, legal knowledge, and sure perception to the complex problem of gas and electricity rates.
In 1912, without assistants, he engaged in an eight months' legal battle with the utilities which gave him more than a statewide reputation. His intensive preliminary study of the techniques of production and distribution, of utility methods and rulings in other states, and of the intricacies of accounting and financing enabled him, through his persistent examination of expert witnesses, to establish an unbeatable case for the consumers.
He not only won a rate reduction but established rate-making precedents from which Maryland consumers long continued to benefit. Largely upon this record of accomplishment, Ritchie was elected attorney-general of Maryland in 1915. He held that office for four years, except for six months' leave (June-December 1918) to serve as general counsel for the national War Industries Board of World War I.
In 1919 Ritchie was elected governor of Maryland. His unabated industry and application, plus a remarkable political sagacity, made his first term a notable period. Facing a brief legislative session, he devoted the post-election weeks, night and day, to preparing bold plans for budget administration, a merit system, central purchasing, less frequent elections, workmen's compensation, public schools, public health, and conservation of state resources.
The originating of his reforms must properly be credited to many others, but Ritchie himself was largely responsible, through his own driving power, his sense of timing, and his clear gifts of leadership, as well as his generally wise selection of administrators, for translating lofty hopes and ideas into political reality. His appointees lifted Maryland educational and public health standards from low to high in the list of American states.
Yet his several administrations proved able, by government economies, to reduce realty tax rates (while initiating newly appropriate taxes, as on gasoline) and at the same time so to improve finances that Maryland obligations rated at par during depression years, when many other states' issues were unacceptable. It is not surprising, then, that he won a second election - the first Maryland governor to achieve this since the office became elective - and successively a third and a fourth.
He was professor of law at the University of Maryland from 1907 until his election as governor. His writings, other than his treatise Municipal Condemnation in Maryland (1904), were chiefly state papers, which were marked by precision and conciseness.
In 1934 illness lessened Ritchie's powers and popularity, and a fifth campaign for the governorship ended in his first defeat. Fourteen months after leaving the executive mansion he died of cerebral hemorrhage at his apartment in Baltimore. He was buried in Greenmount Cemetery there.
Achievements
Ritchie was a conservative who campaigned for, but did not win, the presidential nomination in both 1924 and 1932. As of 2013, Ritchie is the state's longest-serving governor l, with almost 15 years of service (14 years, 11 months, and 27 days) and a record four terms. Ritchie has the eighth-longest gubernatorial tenure in post-Constitutional U. S. history at 5, 474 days.
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
Politics
While his efficient record as governor won Ritchie wide attention, his national fame came principally from his conspicuous leadership during the 1920's in the movement against national prohibition.
Keeping as clear as he could of unwelcome and self-interested allies, he based his fight on philosophic and constitutional grounds, for he was a firm believer in state rights, even to the extent of opposing federal aid for highways. Despite his earlier receptiveness to reform, Ritchie by the 1920's was prominent within the conservative wing of the national Democratic party.
As an able and popular governor, he was frequently mentioned as a presidential prospect, and as the 1932 election neared, he seemed for a time a possible candidate, his conservatism capable of winning southern and business support, his strong anti-prohibition stand appealing to the city machines. But by the time of the nominating convention prohibition was giving way to the depression as the prime issue, and Ritchie never developed any real strength.
Personality
Ritchie was stately in appearance, squarely built, with blue eyes under dark brows and, in his later years, snow-white hair. He had a calm dignity and was an earnest and persuasive if not a polished speaker.
Connections
His early marriage (1907) to Elizabeth Catherine Baker of Catonsville, Maryland, was childless and ended in divorce in 1916; he never remarried.
