154 SHOULD SCALE SLIDE OR NOT 



to the net income of the plant. A market is found for water 

 that could not otherwise be sold. The money received under the 

 contract makes up the deficit on the interest and helps the works 

 out of a tight place. So far, the contract is all to the good and 

 is advantageous to everyone; but the low rate that is made 

 in this way to meet competition of another supply and to secure 

 much needed revenue to meet an urgent early deficit is very per- 

 sistent. The chances are that either the rate itself, or some other 

 rate not very greatly higher than it will be continued through a 

 long term of years and extending into a time when general 

 water supply conditions have wholly changed, 



If we can look at this same plant say ten or twenty years 

 afterward, when the town has grown and business has grown, 

 and nearly the whole of the two million gallons of daily plant 

 capacity has been sold, we shall find that the time is approach- 

 ing when the plant must be extended to meet increasing busi- 

 ness, and it must be extended sooner because of the water that 

 is supplied to that factory. 



If the matter is carried to its logical conclusion and it is 

 found that it is necessary to build the new works five years sooner 

 than they would otherwise be necessary because of that supply 

 to the factory then logically the water rates charged to the 

 factory should carry the whole interest charge on the new plant 

 during the five years interval. That, of course, cannot be done. 

 But the illustration does represent a real substantial condition 

 that must be taken into account in considering equitable prices 

 for water for manufacturing purposes through a term of years. 



In the case that we are assuming, the contract that was 

 advantageous at the start, at the end of ten or twenty years 

 has ceased to be an asset to the works; it has become instead 

 a serious liability. 



Considering that plant from the time when it first becomes 

 apparent that additional capacity will be required to maintain 

 the business, the conditions with respect to equitable meter 

 rates are very different from what they were in the early days 

 when the special rate was made. 



The question to be considered now is whether the sliding 



