NOVEMBEE 3, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



581 



pots as some people seem to fear, provided 

 they are put under proper restraints, but 

 society cannot afford to make restraints 

 which of themselves are unnecessary or 

 unfair. These corporations serve a bene- 

 ficial end in our life, and their rights are 

 as well founded and should be as well se- 

 cured and held sacred as the rights of any 

 citizens who are individually or collectively 

 bent on any proper business pursuits. 



Some people seem to believe that all 

 public-service corporation men are either 

 wicked or are liars or thieves. This has as 

 little foundation in fact as a belief that all 

 men in Spain carry mandolins or that 

 Spanish women always wear mantillas. 

 If such unjust, superficial and improper 

 opinions are to have influence in this na- 

 tion, then only misfortune and woe can be 

 the outcome. It is necessary for aU men 

 trained in straight thinking to combat such 

 folly and to cry out for fair dealing, one 

 with the other, as between the public- 

 service corporations and the public which 

 they are established to serve. No engineer 

 does his duty who does not stand with 

 fidelity for equally square treatment for 

 as hy these corporations. These corpora- 

 tions are not here as vampires on society, 

 but are here to serve the needs of the 

 people in a reasonable and business-like 

 way; and their proper objects can not be 

 accomplished unless they are treated with 

 reason and established in confidence. They 

 obtain their income from serving the pub- 

 lic, and they can not give generous service 

 unless they are granted generous oppor- 

 tunities. When under reasonable re- 

 straints and supervision, as by properly 

 constituted public commissions, they are 

 more quickly responsive to public senti- 

 ment than could reasonably be expected of 

 any publicly owned business organization 

 of equal magnitude which could exist 

 under our political conditions, and their 



usefulness is proved beyond contradiction. 

 Perhaps no man is more likely to observe 

 these things than one whose professional 

 practise, like that which has come to me, 

 makes him retained adviser in some in- 

 stances to public-service companies and in 

 other instances to governments or munici- 

 palities, for he has to study fairness to each 

 class of clients in all he does. 



A barrier of distrust which exists be- 

 tween these servitors of the people and the 

 people whom they serve is presumably due, 

 on the one hand, to a memory by the public 

 of misdeeds which were perpetrated before 

 recent demands for reform brought about 

 the establishment of adequate public super- 

 vision in prominent centers, and to a fear 

 of the repetition of misdeeds where super- 

 vision and publicity have not yet been pre- 

 scribed; and, on the other hand, to a cer- 

 tain reluctance by corporation managers 

 to exhibit full and convincing frankness 

 for fear that such frankness may be made 

 the opportunity by unscrupulous politi- 

 cians or persons with interested motives to 

 crowd them to the verge of insolvency. 

 These particular conditions of distrust 

 could be obviated by means of the public 

 itself owning the public-service properties 

 and operating them in its own interest, but 

 this is a drastic and undesirable alterna- 

 tive. Any fair-minded man of extended 

 business experience who will study with 

 unbiased intention the details of public 

 ownership and public trading in the ven- 

 erable and stable cities and states of conti- 

 nental Europe must be impressed with the 

 reality that our inexpert and shifting gov- 

 ernmental bodies are wholly imadapted to 

 cope with such responsibilities, or to make 

 an economic success equal on the average to 

 that now accomplished by the privately 

 managed service companies, whether the 

 measure of success be taken on the basis of 

 service provided for a unit of payment or 



