The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1895-09-11
PATERNALISM.
DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPE.

DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPE.
Birmingham has spent millions of dol
lars in destroying unhealthy buildings
and erecting new ones. Has it paid. The
death rate in those portions of the city
has fallen from sixty to twenty per
thousand. The critics of Municipalism
need to have higher standard when
they ask what pays, than the mere stand
ard when they ask what pays, than the
mere standard of dividends to the invest
or, and no questions asked. There is
blood on many a large dividend, and
death in most gilt-edged stock, Public
enterprises do not coin money out OF
starvation wages, turn water into I'M
earned gold, or squeeze profits out OF the
public purse But though such sources
of revenue are not open to public action,
municipal enterprises have usually paid
by honest methods over and over again.
Read Albert Shaw's Municipal Govern
ment in Great Britain" 1t puts Ameri-
cans to blush. Glasgow supplies it's own
gas, and has spent millions of dollars;
YET IL has T6uuCcu I'D uCUl VI pO,oOV,VVV
in 1875 to 81 100000 in 1894, and has re-
duced the price of gas from $1.14 per
thousand feet charged by the old private
company to sixty cents, charged by the
municipality 1t will soon clear off its
whole debt. and earn large. profit. 1t Is
renting too gas stoves to the poor at low
rates, which nevertheless cover cost, an
ipestimable boon to those who live in
small apartments.
Glasgow has spent $4,000, 900 for water
works, and is paying this cost Off, al
though it has reduced the charge for
water from lad in the pound charged by
the former private company, to Cd charg-
ed by the municipality.
Glasgow has spent nearly $1OO,000,00O
to improve the Clyde. 1t today runs
ferries, supplies ships with water af-
fords all dock convenences, and has an
annual revenue of some 100000 which
more than pays the interest on the orig
inal investments mot all the $100,000,000
being investment, without considering
the fact that this expenditure has trans
formed fordable stream into river
which has made Glasgow wealthy. Glas-
gov provides good respectable lodging
houses for the poor, has destroyed the
trade of the worst private houses, and
Glasgow cleans and lights it's tenements,
courts and stairs. 1t provides public
baths used by 1,500 persons per day the
entire year through, and wash-houSes
where 1921 washingS were done in
1890-91. The city has destroyed acres of
unsanitary houses and built new ones on
sanitary principles, which rents at low
rates, meeting the. whole cost, though it
has opened parks, squares, etc. These
and many other similar enterprises have
been undertaken, and, in health and mu
nicipal improvement, have paid humid
red times over. Most of them have finan-
clally paid, and the few that have not,
like the lighthouses which do so much
good, are more than paid for by those
which do. There is, therefore, no neces-
sity of raising the rates of taxation one
penny to do all this. 1t is Voluntary So
cialism. The city government votes to
do it and no one is taxed in order that
the city government may do what he per-
haps has voted against. Those who be-
lieye in such Socialism simply 60 ahead
and act and it pays it's own expenses.
Nor are any prevented from competing.
There is no forced monopoly Today
Glasgow owns and operates it's own
street railroad system, but the old COM
pany that formerly operated the system
Is dllOWCu " COlupcIc Will IL Wy oil cldU-
crate system Of omnibuses. The city has
learned to laugh at the competition of
private companies
Such is chapter from Glasgow's ex-
perience. Similar results could be quot
ed from Birmingham, Manchester, Lon
don, Berlin, and many smaller cities,
and the same principles apply to nation
al governments. Why have we not de-
veloped such municipalism in America?
Because most Americans do not believe
in government undertakings, and many
of those who do believe in them do not
work for them, but go off on all kinds of
weak efforts at cooperative colonies and
large sounding cooperative stock COM
panies. Americans prefer to talk about
freedom while the corporations rule the
land. The corporations run cars in
Brooklyn and kill 40 men; they reduce
wages and call out the army if their
employees grow restless; they allow the
people to pass laws and then get the
Judges to declare the laws unconstitu-
tional. No; Socialism, not cooperative
colonies is for America, as for Europe,
the only hope of freedom; and Socialism
of the voluntary kind we can and must
develop, without any fear of doing vio-
lence to the liberty of Individuals Shall
we not unite for such Socialism applied
by cities and by the nation ?-The Amer
lean Fabian.