LETTERS TO THE - EDITOR. -
RATES AND MUNICIPAL TRADING,
[To THE EDITOR OF TOO .SPE0ATOIL.1 Sza,—In your last issue a letter on " Rates and Municipal Trading," signed by " S. B.," suggesting, as it appears to do, that municipal trading might be a cure for the high rates from which the town of Poole is now suffering, is surely embracing our old friend the logical fallacy of illicit process of the- minor term. The syllogism suggested appears to be :— Bournemouth is a town with municipal trade (tramways) ; Bournemouth is a town with low rates (Ss, as against -8s.:9d. at Poole) ; -therefore towns with municipal trade have low rates. Irrespective of the false reasoning, the array of facts against this conclusion is unanswerable, but far' too loneto be detailed in this letter. But against the Prosperity' of Bournemouth (assigned by "S. B." to its indulgence in 'the perilous game of municipal trading, though doubtless equally to be accounted for by the high rateable value of Bourneniouth, which is visible to the eye of any passing visitor who Views its endless streets of Mansions) let us set as individual instances of 'failure in municipal' trading the fact •that'llath Corporation hai just had the wisdoM and metal Courage to arrange for the sale of its municipal lighting' concern to a private 'company ; that the Swindon local authority has lately-raised a 'special rate of ls. in the pound to cover the cost of the recent tramway accident (Standard, Jahu.6,ry 24th, 1907); and the further fact, "stale," no doubt,- but none the less a stern reality, that the London 'County Council' has in one year thrown away more than £50,000 of the ratepayers money over its Quixotic steamboat venture. And then, for the facts as a whole, may I refer " S. B." to Lord Avebury's recent work, " On Municipal and National Trading" (Macmillan and Co.)? Lord Aiebury has there shown (p. 90) that on a capital of over £100,000,000 invested in municipal trading undertakings throughout the kiiigdom, less than -per cent. interest has been earned " in relief of rates " ; and further, that this magnificent profit would be turned into a loss but for methods of municipal accounts which no business concern could possibly adopt without speedy bankruptcy,—e.g., the writing off of utterly inadequate sums for depreciation (as, for instance, only 219,970 in electrical undertakings on a capital of over £12,500,000; or again, only 227,000 on waterworks with a capital of 257,000,000). Nay, more, it is certain that many " trading " municipalities have shown their " profit "— tiny as it is—by such childish methods as designedly fixing their (monopoly) charges to the public for gas, electric light, &a., at such a figure as will allow the desired " profit," or else by such " slim " or careless methods of accounts as charging to the "trading" venture a quite inadequate share of the .clerical, office, inspection, and other expenses really incurred by them in connexion therewith. Then, let us bear in mind the following facts, which in the minds of thousands of thinking men in England absolutely condemn the whole system of municipal trading, whatever its " profits " :—
(1) Until our national Parliament has the courage to be just at all costs, and either disfranchise all municipal employes (so far as the municipal vote is concerned), or place them in a single special municipal employe constituency, every new form of municipal undertaking creates a new body of such "tied" employes, and exposes municipal authorities to all the dangers and expense of modern labour agitations. Nay, the very position of these men as at once employes and electors of their employers (who pay them, be it noted, with other people's money) tempts them to ask for, and accept, that most insidious of all bribes, and far more degrading than the old cash bribe, the promise of somebody else's money "out of the rates" to better their position.
(2) That wherever municipal undertakings are carried on in competition with free industries the competition is grossly unfair. For all deficiencies in the municipal undertaking are, of course, made good out of the rates, and the private employer or company is taxed to pay the municipal employe who is competing with him and his workmen. He has therefore by 'so much the leas profit out of which to pay his own employes or start new labour- employing ventures. See how this recoils upon the working man.
(3) Let "S. B." ask the Fabian Society, the Social Democratic Federation, the Independent Labour Party, and other bodies -whose object is to abolish free industry and make the State or the municipality the universal employer,--let him ask them what is the agency by which they mean to bring about this revolution, a revolution which most of us still think would bring disaster to our country, and end in a system of absolute stagnation and slavery to the Socialist bureaucrat. Well, I will ask your kindness for space to quote from Lord Avebury's book two answers to the question,--answers which have all the more force because they do not come from any of the " thorough " societies named above, but from a body having the seemingly innocent title of the Municipal Employees' Association.
At a meeting of the local branch of this Association, held at East Ham on September 20th, 1905, Mr. Taylor, the general secretary, stated that- " There were, roughly speaking, seventy thousand municipal employes in and around London, and if they were organised they would [? could] do almost anything. The County Council employed thirty thousand men, but only a very small proportion , belonged to this or any other Union."
..Mr. P. J. Tevenan, the organiser of the Association, said
"As municipal employes their numbers were going up to a ;matter of one million. Municipalisation, he held, was a weans to , an end ; the end was to establish a principle of nationalisation in the very near future of all the industries of the country."
;Kindly, Sir, print the words I have underlined in my MS. in .our best italics, or in red ink, if you have it handy; for although Mr. Tevenan may not be a very significant figure 'outside the Municipal Employees' Association, yet his words express the doctrine and the aims of the modern English -Socialists; and the capture of the municipalities by the unlimited extension of municipal undertakings (with their ever-growing army of rate-paid employe voters) is the means which they intend to use for the spread of their doctrine and the attainment of their aim. Surely an advocate of municipal trading ought not to go unanswered on the very day of the County Council election, when Londoners are urged to expel the men who wish to enslave our country. This is my excuse for so long a letter.—I am, Sir, &c., C. W. S. COBS=
Dorchester.
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