Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/357

Rh at any time. This act, and a similar one introduced in the previous session, have been criticized in many quarters. Some persons regard them as "paternalistic," and others brand them as "socialistic." Some object to the idea of using public money to run steamship lines at a loss. Some persons given to seeing ghosts can only regard this as schemes to buy the German steamers tied up in our ports; while to others the specter assumes the form of "an entering wedge to government operation of transportation by land as well as by water." Others oppose them because they believe the navigation laws should be changed. Others because they believe that the proper remedy is in subsidies to privately owned and operated lines. Both these last classes are unwilling that the patient should be cured by any other remedy than their own—although they will probably admit that there never was a time when the acceptance of either of these remedies was so unlikely as just now. As to the idea that the adoption of such a measure would be a precedent for railroad operation by the government, or would in the slightest degree pave the way to any such result, I can imagine nothing more unlikely. The conditions which exist in ocean transportation, and the theory upon which governmental intervention must be justified, are so wholly different from the railroad situation, that there can be neither analogy nor comparison between the two. Moreover, as the governmental intervention would probably be temporary—ultimately yielding the field to private capital—and would probably show a balance on the wrong side of the ledger, opponents of government ownership of railroads should rather welcome the experiment as likely to prove an illuminating object-lesson. The bill authorizes the shipping board to "purchase or construct" vessels. While much-needed orders would quickly be given to our ship-yards, no doubt, pending construction, some vessels would be either purchased or chartered, to take care of the present trade emergency, and it is quite possible—perhaps likely—that some of these would be German. Does this detail damn the whole proposition? The other objections—paternalism, socialism, and the use of public money in a probably non-remunerative enterprise—all involve the same principle. Men always have differed, and always will differ, as to just what functions governments—national, state or municipal—should undertake. Leaving out the extremists at both ends, I think it may be said that a very large majority of our people are of opinion that government should provide all those things necessary to the health, safety and comfort of the community which private capital does not and will not provide. Where private capital might do it on certain terms, or where private capital is doing it and there is a dispute as to the efficiency of the service or the fairness of the rates and terms, there is always and necessarily a wide field for argument. But where the thing is necessary, and private capital has not undertaken, and will not undertake.