844 REPORT— 1900. 



further municipal enterprise : (a) health and housing ; (b) millc supply ; (c) tele- 

 phones ; {d) tire insurance ; (e) savings banlis ; (/) drink ; (ff) combinations 

 amongst traders. 



Monopoly by combination of private traders in comparison with a municipal 

 monopoly. 'General user' theory. Artificial raising' of wages by municipal 

 standard rate of wages. Can a city councillor undertake so many and increasing 

 duties ? Possibility of reintroduction of cottage industries by cheap municipal 

 electric power supply. Conclusion. 



2. Municipal Building for the Overcrowded. By Auberon Herbert. 



We can supply this want either by the system of free trade, which has done so 

 much for us, or by enlarging once more the area of compulsion. The real question 

 is then: Is compulsion a good or a bad thing? Undotibtediy it is easy and cou- 

 venient ; but does it not tend to bring serious evils with it — disagreement, care- 

 less and expensive management, corruption ? does it not make children of us, 

 cpoiling the temper of compeller and compelled ? 



Let us see how the land lies. Looking round at Europe to-day we see a 

 general failure of highly organised systems of compulsion. Writers of different 

 schools complain that parliamentary institutions are breaking down. Almost 

 everywhere minorities are in revolt against majorities. They obstruct, prevent 

 discussion, and lock the machine. Once we hoped great things from the system of 

 majorities and minorities. The sting was to be extracted from human disagree- 

 ments, and we were to live side by side in a happy family. Unfortunately men 

 have discovered that majorities are very keen to pursue their own particular 

 interests ; that to be in a minority means to lose all control, perhaps for many 

 years, over one's own mind, body, and property, and that the ingenious precept 

 that it is the duty of minorities to turn themselves into majorities, and so to 

 possess the promised land, is rather like the nursery maxim — jam yesterday, jam 

 to-morrow, but never to-day. 



AVhy has the governing machine failed ? Partly because men are not 

 scrupulous enough to possess this power over each other, and spend the money 

 of others on their own pet projects ; partly because the game of politics accustoms 

 us to the use of crooked weapons ; partly because compulsion destroys competition 

 and disfavours difference — ' Progress is difference,' said Spencer, condensing a 

 whole philosophy of life into that short sentence, and packing enough moral 

 dynamite into it to upset a good many comfortable armchairs — and partly because 

 the human race, keen to get its business done for it on such easy terms, and 

 entirely forgetting the narrow limits of brain-power in these days of accumulated 

 knowledge, has piled such a monstrous amount of work on the governing machines. 

 The consequence is that Governments, overpowered by details and lost in a flood of 

 useless paper-work, cannot control their own work ; and the people cannot control 

 their Governments, or even understand what is done in their name. The vastness, 

 the multifarious character, the ever-extending range of what is undertaken, render 

 ignorance compulsory on all of us, and we all, representatives and represented, go 

 stumbling and blundering on together, attempting to do the impossible. 



Just as it is with the big central machine, so it is with the smaller local 

 machines. The same ambition to undertake everything and to play the part of 

 earthly Providence, to be all-wise and all-directing ; the same strife between parties, 

 with the same handing over of the minds, the bodies, and the property of all to the 

 victorious section — are producing the same results. What a chronicle of ex- 

 travagance and corruption has met our eyes in many cities of other countries ! 

 what violent partisanship in the Paris and Vienna of the present hour ! what 

 organised illegality in New York ! what desperate remedies in the suspensions of 

 the right to govern themselves in the cities of America ! 



What is the remedy? Let our municipal bodies develop a voluntaryist side to 

 their work. Instead of always compelling, let them sovaQtvaies persuade us to help 

 them in some of their many duties. In this very matter let them appeal to us to 



