162 WATER WASTE DEPARTMENT. WATER WASTE DEPARTMENT. In this issue will be found an account of “Waste in the Water Department," city of Chicago. The ease with which mouey can be wasted in a thousand ways makes eternal vigilance the price of efficiency in this department of public service. If the example here given of the waste of public water departments shall lead to a more careful supervision of this service here. and elsewhere, it will have served its purpose. At the present time more than half of United States municipalities own and operate waterworks. The advocates of the municipal ownership of this service have many reasons other than economic efficiency why they advocate this policy. It should be apparent to them, however, if municipalities fail to establish a record for economic efficiency that, with this advantage in their favor, private corporations can answer all other requirements, and thus turn the tide once more in the direction of private ownership and operation. LIGHTING PLANTS DOING BUSINESS AT A LOSS. The United States Department of Labor has recently issued a report of its investigation of water, gas and electric lighting plants. This report contains a table showing the income, expenses and profit or loss of 632 electric lighting companies, and divulges the surprising fact that nearly one-third of the whole LIGHTING PLANTS. 163 number-200-are doing business at a loss. People who are being served at less than cost of production, the deficit falling on stockholders, instead of going into the liabilities of municipalities, to be paid by taxpayers, are not, or would not be, if they knew the fact, eager to take over the lighting business for public account. The showing made by this report gives. a sharp point to a letter we received from a corporation manager, saying: "Do not send anything more to this town against municipal ownership until we have sold our plant to the town, which we are trying to do." AN ADVANTAGE FOR MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP. From the official report of the proceedings of the common council of the city of Detroit, November 13, 1900, we learn of a procedure which illustrates an advantage for municipal over private ownership and operation of electric lighting plants, that advocates of municipal ownership have failed to press on public attention. The committee on "ways and means" reported: "To the Honorable, the Common Council: "Gentlemen :-Your committee on ways and means, to whom was referred the report of the public building committee, submitting the communication from the public lighting commission, relative to connecting its lighting mains to the G. A. R. building, re 164 MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP. spectfully report that we have carefully considered the matter and beg leave to state that the cost of running to and connecting with the said building the wires of the public lighting commission (including the installation of two extra circuits for separate metering), will amount to $1,284.20. Your committee, upon investigation, find that the commission has no funds available for this purpose, as the board of estimates only allowed funds for the operation and maintainance of the plant, and made no provision for extensions and betterments. "We therefore recommend, inasmuch as it is a necessity, that the stores and balance of said building be lighted, that the controller be instructed to place to the credit of the G. A. R. building fund the sum above mentioned for the purpose of paying said improvements, said expense to be taken out of moneys received from the House of Correction.” This recommendation was adopted by the council. Here is a minor extension of the public lighting plant, the cost of which is paid out of money taken from another department, and will not appear in the construction or operating accounts of the lighting plant. How much money has been spent by the common council for the lighting plant, without making it a part of its investment or operating expenses, we are not in position to know. This incident furnishes evidence, however, that such a thing has now been done. It may have been done before. It may be MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP A PROTEST. 165 done again. Results shown by such an imperfect system of accounting are offered to the public as a guide for its public policy. If the information is incorrect a policy that follows its guidance must be incorrect. One thing is certain: No private corporation can procure funds for the extension of its service without having a charge for the amount appear in its construction or expense accounts and as a debt to the source from which the money was obtained. Until the accounts of municipally owned and operated industries are kept by a uniform system and carefully audited by authority of the state the people will never know whether or not they are securing economic gains by making such ventures. MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP A PROTEST. The demand for municipal ownership and operation of public service industries derives much of its popularity from its acceptance as a protes: against real or feared acts of injustice, perpetrated by corporations. When honest, intelligent persons who advocate municipal ownership for this reason are shown that the evils of corporate ownership can be entirely overcome and all the advantages of municipal ownership can be secured by a proper system of public regulation, they readily drop the municipal ownership idea and become advocates for a scientific system of regulation. They recognize the fact that such a system of regulation is as essential to success 166 MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP A PROTEST. ful municipal ownership as it is to satisfactory corporate ownership. In New York City Controller Coler has illogically recommended established municipal ice plants to overcome the evils created by an ice trust. In Boston the municipal ice plant has been abandoned, because the ice it produces costs the city about $60 per ton, while ice supplied by private contract costs only $3 to $4 per ton. In New York, again, the Central Federated Union seeks to head off the raising of the price of gas, after a gas war, to the legal price established by the state Legislature, by petitioning the city authorities to establish a municipal gas plant. The union illogically assumes that the price at which gas was sold under pressure of a gas war is a price at which gas can be sold from a municipal plant, although the city of Philadelphia, when operating its own gas plant, never sold gas at less than $1.00 per 1,000. The price in New York, established by the state Legislature, is now $1.05 per 1,000. In Baltimore an agitation has been started to establish a public lighting plant, as a protest against a supposed exorbitant price demanded by the lighting corporations, although no evidence has been produced by the lighting commission to show that a public lighting plant would be a good investment. In dozens of places throughout the country this controversy is being blindly carried on by those who |