Conservation Commission 47 



public questions in this country which has no place in the affairs 

 of foreign countries, and which makes it impossible for this 

 country to compete in a commercial enterprise with private cor- 

 porations. Trying to operate a commercial entei-prise success- 

 fully in this country with political help is trying the impossible. 

 Politics has its rules and provinces outside of which it cannot 

 successfully venture; too few seem to understand this principle. 

 A great many men would make politics of everything, and as 

 many more would make business of everything. One can also 

 find marshalled any number of municipalities in this country to 

 prove and disprove the success and failure of municipal owner- 

 ship. 



We find in this matter, as in all matters of dispute on public 

 questions, a difference as to what the State Constitution intends : 

 one side invoking section 7 of article 7 of the State Constitution 

 to prove that the State and the State only can engage in the de- 

 velopment of this hydro-electric power; while the opposing party 

 vigorously maintain, under this same constitutional provision, 

 that the State may enter into the construction and maintenance 

 of reservoirs, etc., for three specific purposes and these only: 

 First, to regulate the flow of streams; secondly, for municipal 

 water supply; and thirdly, for the canals of the State; that this 

 provision of the Constitution in nowise provides for the hydro- 

 electrical development of the water powers. So much for the 

 constitutionality of the question. 



Some persons affect to believe that the State should engage in 

 the development and sale of this great power as a permanent 

 business for the purpose of producing a commodity in which 

 there would be a good commercial profit. To me it is positively 

 incredible how any person versed in the ways of public affairs 

 can entertain for a moment any such impracticable theory. The 

 advocates of this speculation with whom I consulted seemed more 

 concerned in preventing the development of our water power by 

 rich men than they did in enriching the State or relieving the 

 already overburdened tax payers. Many of these persons are 

 opposed to the consummation of all public affairs and naively 

 rest their position on their interest in and protection of the poor 

 man's rights. So far, this side of the matter has been a sort of 



