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Show IS HEBEJ STAY Control and Publicity for Publio Service Corporations. VERDICT OF PROMINENT MAN Theodore N. Vail, President of West-, em Union and Telephone Companies, Compa-nies, Recognizes Rights of the American Public. Public regulation of public service) corporations has come to stay. It ought to have come and it ought to stay. That is the flat and unequivocal assertion of Theodore N. Vail, prest dent of both the American Telephone and Telegraph company and the Western West-ern Union Telegraph company. It came in the form of his annual report re-port to the seventy thousand stockholders stock-holders of the two great corporations. Although Mr. Vail's advocacy of full publicity in connection with the affairs of such concerns was well understood, nobody In financial circles had anticipated antici-pated so frank an avowal of full public pub-lic rights in the shaping of their general gen-eral conduct. It came consequently as a surprise, not only because of its novelty and squareness, but also on account of the unqualified acquiescence acquies-cence of a board of directors comprising compris-ing such eminent and conservative financiers as Robert Winson, of Kidder, Kid-der, Peabody & Co., and Henry L. Higginson of Boston, Henry P. Davison Davi-son of J. P. Morgan & Co.; Senator W. Murray Crane, George F. Baer, T. Jefferson Coolidge, Jr., Norman W. Harris, John I. Waterbury and others. President Vail's declaration is her aided as the first recognition by those in high corporate authority of the justice jus-tice of the demand that the publio be regarded as virtual partners in all matters that pertain to the common com-mon welfare. He goes directly to the point. "Public control or regulation of public pub-lic service corporations by permanent commissions," he says, "has come and come to stay. Control or regulation, to be effective, means publicity; it means semi-public discussion and consideration before action; it means everything which Is the opposite oppo-site of and inconsistent with effective competition. Competition aggressive, effective competition means strife, industrial warfare; it means contention; conten-tion; it oftentimes means taking advantage ad-vantage of or resorting to any means that the conscience of the contestants or the degree of the enforcement of the laws will permit. "Aggressive competition means duplication du-plication of plant and investment. The ultimate object of such competition is the possession of the field wholly or partially; therefore it means either eith-er ultimate combination on such basis and with such prices as will cover past losses, or it means loss of return on investment, and eventual loss of capital. However it results, all costs of aggressive, uncontrolled competition are eventually borne, directly or indirectly, by the public. Competition which is not aggressive, presupposes co-operative action, understandings, under-standings, agreements, which result in general uniformity or harmony of action, which, in fact, is not competition competi-tion but is combination, unstable, but for the time effective. When thoroughly thor-oughly understood it will fce found that 'control' will give more of the benefits and public advantages, which are expected to be obtained through such Q-wi.ership, and will obtain them without the public burden of either the public office-holder or public pub-lic debt or operating deficit "When through a wise and judicious state control and regulation all the advantages without any of the disadvantages disad-vantages of state ownership are secured, se-cured, state ownership is doomed." "If Mr. Vail is right," says Harper's Weekly, in a concise summing-up, "then it seems pretty plain that we are entered upon a new era in both economics and politics. And it Is high time we did if evolution is to supplant revolution as an efficient force in the development of civilization." |