Franklin Delos Wilcox

Background

Delos Franklin Wilcox was born on April 22, 1873 on a farm near Ida, Mich. , the son of Byron M. and Lorain (Jones) Wilcox.

Education

He received his elementary education on his father's acres and in the neighborhood schools and entered the University of Michigan, where he was profoundly influenced by John Dewey. When he graduated, in 1894, he had determined to make his life work a definite contribution to the improvement of local government.

Career

He presented for the degree of Ph. D. at Columbia in 1896 a thesis entitled Municipal Government in Michigan and Ohio (1896), which was followed by The American City (1904) and Great Cities in America (1910). The first practical application of his purpose was the direction of civic reform agencies in Grand Rapids and Detroit from 1905 to 1907, during which period he edited Civic News, the weekly journal of the Detroit Municipal League and the Civic Club of Grand Rapids. He learned much from the struggle for control of public utilities going on in Detroit, particularly with respect to transportation. This insight was most useful when in 1907 he accepted an appointment as chief of the bureau of franchises of the public service commission for the first district of New York (New York City). He resigned in 1913 to become deputy commissioner of the department of water supply, gas and electricity of New York City, a position which he held until 1917. During this period he produced several additional books on city government and published his notable two-volume work, Municipal Franchises (1910 - 11). These volumes on franchises exerted a wide influence and upon them his professional reputation principally rests. In 1917 Wilcox organized a staff of assistants and established himself as a consultant on utility problems - always on the side of the public. He made an extensive investigation of street railway problems for the Federal Electric Railways Commission in 1919, issuing his conclusions privately as Analysis of the Electric Railway Problem (1921). In his Preface he reiterated his opinion that "no permanent solution of the electric railway problem, consistent with the public interest, is possible except in public ownership", a view much more extreme than that of the Commission as a whole. He also participated as an expert in a number of important utility rate cases in which his position regarding several important factors was at distinct variance with that of many other authorities. He was a stanch defender of prudent investment as the basis for rates; objected to the addition of such intangibles as "going value" and "cost of financing"; and insisted that annual charges to operating expenses for depreciation should be consistent with the deduction of accrued depreciation from the rate base, and that both are directly related to the service life of utility property. His depreciation theory was embodied in his monograph, Depreciation in Public Utilities (1925). The technical work underlying his valuations and rate studies was done by his staff, and he correlated the engineering, accounting, economic, and legal phases. He was attacked by utility companies on the score that only engineers and utility builders can make valuations; and finally in the Denver Tramways case, a federal judge granted the company's contention and excluded his testimony. His later activities were directed more particularly toward writing, which included a revision of Robert A. Whitten's two-volume work on Valuation of Public Service Corporations. This was completed shortly before his sudden death on April 4, 1928, but a labor still closer to his ideals was left unfinished - a comprehensive work on the administration of municipally owned and operated utilities. His preliminary outline and partial development of this thesis was published posthumously as a booklet, The Administration of Municipally Owned Utilities (1931).

Achievements

• Wilcox spent considerable time, especially in the later years, at his fruit farm, "Wandawood, " at Elk Rapids, Mich. His technical library, including a file of his writings, was donated to the University of Chicago. Among his publications, besides the more notable works previously mentioned, were: The Study of City Government (1897); City Problems (1899); Ethical Marriage; Government by All the People, or the Initiative, the Referendum and the Recall as Instruments of Democracy (1912); The Indeterminate Permit in Relation to Home Rule and Public Ownership (1926); and many reports on special utility problems, as well as pamphlets and magazine articles on local government, franchises, and utilities.

Works

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• book

  • Study of City Government: An outline of the problems of municipal functions, control and organization

    (Study of City Government - An outline of the problems of ...)

  • The Regulation of Private Water Companies in New York City (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Regulation of Private Water Companies in...)

  • Government by All the People; Or, the Initiative, the Referendum, and the Recall as Instruments of Democracy

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • Analysis of the Electric Railway Problem (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Analysis of the Electric Railway Problem Th...)

Personality

A man of great modesty and personal charm, with an effervescent sense of humor, he was an excellent public speaker and an effective writer.

Connections

He married Mina M. (Gates) on Feburary 22, 1898. They had four children.

Father:

Byron M. Wilcox

Mother:

Lorain (Jones) Wilcox

Spouse:

Mina M. (Gates)