TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 643 
keeping on the same scale as he pays to his own private housekeeping. (2) In 
addition to these, certain other services are given over to the Government, central 
or local: they are made monopolies, and the products are sold at a non-competitive 
pric, Such are the Post Office and Telegraph services, and in many cases gas, 
water, and tramway service. It is with this second class that we are concerned 
here, and regarding them three points must be emphasised. 
The first is that the reason why these services are reserved to Government is 
certainly not that they can be rendered more cheaply by Government, It is, 
indeed, a debatable point whether they can be; where competition is not allowed, 
this must remain a matter of opinion. They are always reserved for some ulterior 
reason of public interest—some interest which might be imperiled in the conflict 
of private competition. 
The second is that, in such cases, the Government services are general services : 
they are provision, on the basis of the taxpayers’ or ratepayers’ security, of com-, 
modities and services used and enjoyed by the great majority of the citizens. 
The third is that in these services, so far as 1 am aware, there is no precedent 
for the Government selling to one class at a cheaper rate than it sells to another, 
on the ground that the class in question ‘cannot afford it.’ The poorest man pays 
a penny for a stamp; the richest citizen of Glasgow pays no more than a half- 
penny for a car-stage. 
But in the limited proposal. we are now considering, what is being advocated 
is Government provision of a certain commodity for one class alone, and the 
ground taken undisguisedly is, that Government can provide this commodity 
more cheaply than private enterprise can, and that this class cannot afford more. 
It is not, indeed, proposed that the Municipality should rent at one price to the 
richer and another to the poorer tenant ; but it is proposed that the Municipality 
should rent to one class at a rate which the other classes cannot possibly enjoy. 
I do not think the problem can be understood, or its gravity estimated, till it is 
grasped that here the Municipality—the public trustee—is asked to give consent 
to a new principle and precedent for spending public money. Take the argument 
in its concrete form in Glasgow. Owing to (a) increased accommodation and 
conveniences, occasioned chiefly by statutory enactment; (4) increased cost of 
construction through the rise in wages and in the price of material; (c) increased 
cost of maintenance, not only owing to the rise in wages, but owing to the frequent 
abuse and destruction by careless tenants of the expensive fittings which modern 
science demands ; (d) increase in landlords’ taxes; (¢) increased value of land, 
especially in the centre of the city—it seems that houses of one and two apart- 
ments are not being built to let at less than 6/. and 9/ respectively, as against 
5J. 6s. and 8/. 10s. in 1891. It is represented that there is a class of wage- 
earners who cannot pay these rents. It is asserted that, in virtue of its advantages, 
the Municipality can build and let such houses at 4/, 10s, and 8/. respectively, 
and it is stated, without more ado, that it is bound to do so. 
There are two propositions here which cannot be allowed to pass without 
examination: the first is that there is a class which cannot afford the higher rent ; 
the second, that this is a valid reason for the Municipality providing them with 
a lower one, 
(1) Somewhat to the surprise of the Commissioners, it was given in evi- 
dence that, while wages generally have risen, there are labourers in Glasgow 
who are not earning more than 17s. a week—and these not casual labourers, but 
able-bodied men, in regular employment, and of ordinarily steady habits. ‘To 
such a class sixpence a week is undoubtedly a serious consideration, and, although 
one might be inclined to ask if the sixpence could not, with great advantage to 
themselves and their families, be taken off the conventional necessaries of drink and, 
perhaps, tobacco, the point need not be pressed. My reason for doubting if even this 
class ‘cannot afford’ sixpence a week extra for a house is that one of the causes, 
perbaps the principal one, why such men earn only 17s. is that they live in con- 
ditions which lower health and efficiency, and make them inefficient and unreliable 
workers. I fully acknowledge that such people could not pay sixpence extra for 
the rent of a slum such as they are occupying, but I cannot forget the ‘ productive 
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