Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/829

 PUBLIC OWNERSHIP VERSUS PUBLIC CONTROL 813

wealth, and it would take considerable optimism to assume that similar regulations would work equally well everywhere or even anywhere else in the Union. The city of Boston is the danger spot, and source of constant menace to the just exercise of these extraordinary powers over corporate property; and many times there has been occasion to realize how narrow is the margin of safe control in the hands of decent elements, which prevents the legislative system from being converted into a weapon of plunder in the hands of professional blackmailers and " grafters."

However, if Massachusetts has to fight at every step for the integrity of her public-control policies, where shall be found the justification for other and less favored communities rushing away beyond these limits to the extreme experiment of public owner- ship and operation? If an effective system of regulation cannot be maintained in our large cities, because of political corruption, what hope is there for the success of absorption outright, placing public-service facilities wholly in the hands of the selfsame politi- cal influences?

Public control retains the vital spark of individual enterprise and the incentive of private reward, which have kept alive the spirit of industrial progress and brought nearly all 'the material gains of civilization into being; and at the same time asserts in practical form the right of the whole community to hold self- interest within just bounds and guarantee to itself such benefits as its own contribution to the success of the enterprises entitles it to demand. There is " hard Yankee sense " in such a program. It does not violate the American idea of individual achievement. It has shown itself practicable under at least some American condi- tions. But the first task of the municipal reformer is to bring the general civic conditions themselves to some permanent and dependable plane of honesty, public spirit, and cleanness. If public control cannot succeed on any lower level than this, what would happen to public ownership?

HAYES ROBBINS.

WINCHESTER. MASS.