GENERAL SUMMARY. 157 



in industrial affairs seems to be in inverse ratio to the degree of 

 public oversight extended over them. 



If this is the case, what then is the answer? The public utilities 

 can not be turned back into private hands ; yet the entrance of public 

 oversight into their administration is a withering influence, tending 

 to set up ineffectiveness. There would appear to be no middle 

 ground. The lesson of experience seems to say: Either go all the 

 way in or stay out. Those public utilities under public ownership 

 are effective : Witness the United States Post Office and the National 

 Forests. Private industries are effective : See the industrial primacy 

 of this country. Only those compromise activities, neither the one 

 nor the other, are conspicuously faulty. 



If it is true, then, that public participation in the conduct of 

 business affairs exerts a withering influence, as seems to be unmis- 

 takably evidenced in the case of the general run of public utility 

 activities, there arises a grave question as to the outcome of the 

 current Federal control of industry, entered upon as a war measure 

 and designed as a temporary expedient. While these measures, for 

 the most part, will doubtless be laid aside according to schedule, it 

 is a fair presumption that their em^ergency use will raise a significant 

 call for an increased degree of Federal industrial control as a perma- 

 nent establishment. In anticipation of such an issue it is desirable 

 to draw the line sharply between (1) the great majority of industrial 

 activities which require the utmost freedom for effective advance- 

 ment, and (2) the relatively limited range of activities covering 

 necessities in general use that do not lend themselves to competition, 

 or, in other words, the field of public utilities, whose evolutionary 

 end-point is public ownership. A failure on the part of the public 

 to draw the line of demarkation short of private industry, or an 

 unwillingness on the part of private industry to concede to fuU 

 public control the region falling clearly under the heading of public 

 utihties, wiU lead to a disastrous confusion harmful to the welfare 

 of industrial enterprise and the public interest, and that is to say, of 

 the nation as a whole. An adequate public utilities conception wiU 

 be a safeguard badly needed in the period of reconstruction to follow 

 the coming of peace. To this end, the opportunity of clearing up 

 the matter of public utilities through the furtherance of the domestic- 

 fuel issue holds an importance which should not be overlooked. 



Throughout this analysis the purpose has been to seek improvement 

 through the means in hand — through stimulated evolution rather than 

 enforced reconstruction. From this point of view we see that the 

 fuel problem calls for central municipal plants, administered as public 

 utilities, which will provide the fuel needs of the community along 

 modern lines. Looking over the field, we observe that the municipal 



