Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/405

 PRODUCTIVITY OF MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISES 39 1

(6) The price of gas has been falling, especially among the larger companies.

(7) The proportion of the cost of coal obtained from the sale of residuals has been rising.

Now the point upon which emphasis is to be laid is that the changes to which every sort of enterprise is subject and of which the foregoing are illustrations, are of far greater importance in the determination of its real economic productivity than the condition of that business at any point of time. Assume for the moment that all these gas companies had been managed for the last decade as municipal enterprises, would the same changes have taken place? If not, would those that did occur have resulted in a greater or in a less economic productivity ? Such questions, it appears to me, are speculative and will be answered by everyone in accordance with preconceived ideas or theoret- ical arguments. I see no way in which to wring a conclusive answer to them from experience. Accordingly the answer which as a statistician rather than a theorist I am compelled to make to the question at issue is, in the first place, that until municipal enterprises have had a longer history, and the facts have been gathered and presented in a shape suitable for comparison, no method of determining their economic productiv- ity will give convincing results, and that, secondly, when the facts are obtainable, the conclusions must be drawn from the changes which are fostered by the various systems, and that the conditions prevailing under any one at a particular time must be deemed of subsidiary importance.

WALTER F. WILLCOX.

CORNELL UNIVERSITY.