ROSA: SCIENTIFIC WORK OF THE GOVERNMENT 363 



PUBLIC UTILITIES 



21. The government should cooperate actively with gas and 

 electric and railway and telephone companies in the study of 

 the many engineering questions involved in rendering good 

 service to the public. The changed economic conditions of 

 recent years have made it impossible for many public utility 

 companies to meet expenses. In some cases they have gone 

 into the hands of receivers, in many other cases they escape by 

 putting up rates. But advancing the rates beyond a certain 

 point reduces the sales and does not give a proportionate benefit. 

 The public in the end must pay all the cost, and the public is 

 vitally concerned in having efficient and economical management 

 of these utilities. If the government could help the companies 

 to help themselves, it would often be better than an increase in 

 rates. The government could render a service of immense use- 

 fulness and importance by studying the problems of the public 

 utilities and helping the companies to secure more efficient opera- 

 tion and a better understanding by the public of their difficulties 

 and their needs. The utilities are a special kind of partnership 

 between their owners and the public, in which the owners agree 

 to furnish the plant and the service and the public grants a 

 monopoly privilege and agrees to accept the service rendered 

 and to pay the cost. If the company's credit is impaired or 

 it fails altogether the community, as well as the company, suffers. 

 It is evident, therefore, that the public should take a keen and 

 intelligent interest in public utility problems, and especially in 

 the situation which has resulted from the rising cost of labor 

 and commodities, for which the companies are not responsible. 

 The government has been rendering important service of this 

 kind, enough to demonstrate its value and to show that coopera- 

 tion in this work is practicable. But it could render a ser\dce of 

 vastly greater importance to the utilities and to the public, by 

 an expenditure, say, of one million dollars per year for research 

 and education on utility problems. That would be only one 

 cent per year per capita of the country's population, whereas the 



