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Show THE "COST" OF A PIG. Henry Ward Beecher once told of buying a $9 pig, feeding it $40 worth of corn, and selling it for $10; he said that he lost money on the corn, but he cleared a whole dollar on the pig. That is the way with municipal ownership of most utilities. They buy the $9 pig the plant; they feed it $40 worth of political favoritism, political inefficiency, everybody' s-business, irresponsibility, irresponsibil-ity, taxes that it does not pay and then they sell that system of bookkeeping; but the golden corn the taxes, the incentive, the intelligent in-telligent development, growth and management vanishes in the pig's hungry jaws. This gives point to the recent study made by J. A- Van Osdol, formerly president of the Indiana Municipal League, showing that in the municipally owned electric utilities of Massachusetts it costs 35 per cent more to manufacture current and 2 1 per cent more to distribute dis-tribute it than it does in private plants of the same state. The press is united in saying that the government has no right to go into the printing business and print envelopes. It is united in eaying that the absurdly low quoted price does not actually cover the cost of the service; that the rest is made up in excess postal rates, if not in general taxation, and that the local printer is made the goat of a vicious political monopoly. Municipal or state ownership and operation of utilities is a similar assault on the businesses by which free men live. It pays no taxes it is not bound by the rules that bind private competition. It has no responsible control that must in self-protection know its cost and efficiency. It can manke up losses by taxation or impaired or curtailed service. Established as a principal, public ownership might well start printing offices, brick factories, stores, banks, law offices, shoe factories, movies, foundries and farms. The press that has seen the viciousness of the so-called cheap federal printing that is really exorbitantly paid for by indirect taxes, may well condemn the advancing tide of socialized ownership. |