The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-09-15
BOSTON HAS ITS DOSE.
The sTrue History of Municipal Own
 ership in the City Where 1t Flourish

The sTrue History of Municipal Own
 ership in the City Where 1t Flourish
 ed.
 Count Bostone out of the municipal ownership movement. The reason is that Boston had a bad attack a little less than ten years ago. Everything that could be done by the city (short of running the "L") was done by the city. The city had it's own construc- tion plant for taking care of work on public buildings, ferryboats and every thing else owned by the city. The repair plant looked after repairs on everything. The municipality not only supervised all work on electric wiring on private property and the burial of all wires underground in the city, but the wire department also did all the city's electrical wiring work We had municipal blacksmith establish ments municipal carriage or wagon repair shops, and all work on the streets, to the smallest detail, was done by city employees merely laying the streets but all incidental work. Of course we had the municipal printing plant. We had the municipal ice plants, ice houses, ice teams, municipal ice water establishments, and so on through the whole list. No city in the ., a,,, -,,ax11 oxyo,, t,,a,o+ co thorOuohIV iu- to public ownership as Boston did. Few cities in the old world went much fur ther. And the statements of the wond- erful saving accomplished by the city's doing its own work almost took ones breath away-until the experts got to work on the books, and the heads of the departments were obliged to give out facts, rather than fancy. The re- suit of the expertss investigations all of us know.
 From the statement of skilled work men who held high places in some of these bureaus, but were powerless to do much in the way of correcting abuses, few figures are worth quot ing. Reckoning ap the cost of ma-. terial at the current quotations, at that time, and the probable cost of labor necessary to do the work under the supervision of any reliable con- tractor or business house in Boston, they found that job of electrical equipment on the ferryboats operated by the city should have cost, $6,SOO As matter of record, it actually cost $1O,- Oy1 a pifU h1li16- | ing for hospital nurses should have cost $1,52S. It really cost $4,754. The work on a city armory should have cost less than $2,6OO, but the city had to pay nearly $6,7OO for the job Some work on a public school, estimated as likely to cost $1,471 if done under con- tract, cost the city about S9,60O.
 Meanwhile investigations were being pushed in other directiongs. The city's ice plant made an inviting field. After I the statisticians had finished figuring on that public-spirted enterprise, 1t was found that the ice used by 1t was l found that the Ice used by the water department in the drinking fountains cost about S60. ton, when it might l nave been DOuRHL lTOlll tllS iOSoi iSS companies for $2. or $3 ton. Orders
 were immediately given to get rid of the ice plant on the best possible terms lest the outlay thus created might
 weaken Boston,ss credit if the plant 1 should be in operation much longer. If
 a customer could have been found for
 the municipal printing plant that too
 might have been unloaded at once.
 Some investion of the plant indicated
 that outside parties would have done
 it's work at least 25 per cent. below the prices actually charged, and would
 certainly have done much better work
 In short, Boston unloaded it's "munioi-
 paly owned plants for whatever they
 would bring. No matter how heavy the
 loss, it plainly could not be as great as the awful financial drain caused by
 keeping up those departments. Boston
 has had It's lesson. It is not likely ever
 to repeat the blunder; until the costly |experience of the last decade has been
 utterly forgotten-Boston Advertiser.