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Show THE SAME OLD STORY ; The tendency of officialism to py- ramid it functions and activities is illustrated in the development of a 1 municipal undertaking such as a wa-. wa-. ter system, hydro-electric plant or a 1 street railway. Never satisfied, the , official proponents of such propositions proposi-tions constantly reach out for more and more. , San Francisco municipal ownership enthusiasts seem determined to give the country another illustration of pyramiding officialism. They started start-ed to develop a water supply. Long before the city .has been given water or, will be given water, they develop a hydro-electris property as an offshoot off-shoot of the water system. The city can use about 10,000 h. p. for municipal muni-cipal purposes, but will have remaining remain-ing from 50,000 to 90,000 h-. p. either going to waste or to be disposed of. It has been offered $2,000,00 a year by a private company for this power which the private company would dis tribute through its regular channels, to customers in the San Francisco territory. This businesslike proposition proposi-tion is bitterly opposed by municipal ownership advocates. They now will build a distributing system and have the ctiy sell power in competition with established (companies! While the city project could only supply a small portion of the power needed, still the undertaking would be large enough to add hundreds or even thousands of employes to the payroll. In all the proposals for the extension ex-tension of municipal activities no thought seems to be given to the tax-payer, no guarantee is made that these added activities and increased amounts of indebtedness will tend to lower taxes or give better service. Unless San Francisco citizens curtail cur-tail undertakings alnog industrial lines, as part of the development of their water system, they will find that instead of a $45,000,000 investment invest-ment in water plant, which they originally ori-ginally decided upon, they will have .several hundred million dollars invested in-vested in municipal enterprises over which they will have little or no control, con-trol, due to the large number of employes em-ployes who will be connected with these enterprises and who will swell the official army of voters employed by ta-exempt properties, which add daily to the load already over-burdened tax-payers. How 'much more business like and dignified- it would be for the city of San Francisco to sell its surplus power wholesale at ; a net profit to the taxpayer than it would be for it to go into the retail power "business with the Resulting expense of a duplicate distributing system, not to mention the inconvenience, incon-venience, annoyane and expense that a duplicate system is to the consumer consum-er and the taxpayer. |