HOW SOLVE THE PROBLEM? 173 



distinctly public services of an industrial character. 

 The supplying of water to town and city dwellers has 

 been (as another economic authority 9 says) "the only 

 important exception . . . and this has been under- 

 taken by municipal governments less because of any 

 distrust of private enterprise in this field than because 

 good water has been demanded by public opinion even 

 before the business of supplying it gave promise of 

 proving financially successful." The writer j ust quoted 

 also cautions us that, in general, "the objections to 

 such policy [municipal ownership or management] for 

 the cities of the United States are very strong. " 10 



In point of actual operation the public assumption 

 of the milk trade, especially by large cities, would 

 obviously involve serious difficulties not found in the 

 simple taking-over of a water system. In view of the 

 fact that there are as yet (so far as the writer knows) 

 no data of the actual operation of any such plan, cau- 

 tion is certainly justified. The immediate embarrass- 

 ment arising from disturbance of the milk trade must 

 be considered, as well as the possible evils of political 

 control. The debate between those who believe that 

 the difficulties of the milk problem can thus be swept 

 away at a stroke and those who hold that satisfactory 

 public supervision is not only possible but safer and 

 more favorable to efficiency than public management 

 would be, is not unlikely to issue into some trial of the 

 idea.* Auspicious conditions for this might possibly 



* The author has not been able to obtain any information as to 

 whether the idea of municipalization has been put into practice any- 

 where in the United States. At Jamestown, N. Y., however, a plan 

 has been under consideration (Western Medical News, June, 1915). 

 Municipal milk plants, mainly for pasteurization, have been proposed 



