The Press Wednesday, January 19, 1927. Publicly-Owned Services.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18903, 19 January 1927, Page 10

The Press Wednesday, January 19, 1927. Publicly-Owned Services.

One of the most persistent delusions in this Dominion is the notion that one cannot reasonably demand of State or municipal trading enterprises that they should be governed by the principles, and submit to the tests, to which private businesses must subject themselves if they are to prosper. This delusion manifests it-elf in countless ways. Yesterday we were commenting on the opinion of the recently retired chairman of the Tramway Board that the tramways might quite properly fall upon the rates. To-day a correspondent Higgesls that because the tramways arc not " owned" by the public, one must concede to them what one could not concede to a tramway system owned by a private company. We had said that the service rendered by the Board in maintaining part of the street surface adjacent to the rails is a small return for the privilege of obtaining enormous traffic rights, amounting, in some streets, to dominance over all other users of the road. That this is a very great privilege—which the Tramway Board enjoys free—will be recognised by anyone who reflects that no municipality in the Dominion nowadays would part with tramway rights to any private company without making some direct or indirect charge. There are many people who would insist upon such a charge in such a case, but who imagine that because the tramways are "publicly owned" the propriety of such a charge cannot be maintained. "Public ownership," in the minds of such people, excuses everything—except profitable management, for the friends of public ownership always apologise if there is a profit on the business, conceal the profit if they can, and proclaim as a special virtue • of the concern that it is "not run for "profit." Generally, of course, State and municipal trading enterprises and general utility, services do not place upon their managers the strain of apologising to. the democracy for making the enterprises pay. A publiclyowned business, when it is competing with private businesses of a like kind, is dispensed from charges and duties of various kinds that are rigorously insisted upon against tho private trader. When one protests that the charges (such as rates and taxes) and the duties and obligations ought to be the same, the admirers of public ownership will say, "What does it matter? "The public owns tho business, and "to imposo rates and taxes would •' simply be to take money from one "of the public's two pqekets and put "it in the other." But the public w never the same in each case. This, curiously enough, is recognised in practice by some of the State Departments. The Railways Department charges the Postal Department for the carriage of mails, and the Postal Department charges every other Department for the carriage of letters. And this is obviously right. More is involved than a question of bookkeeping and the rule that services rendered should be paid for by those who receive them. The idea that because the public " owns" this or that trading enterprise or general utility service it need not observe, the principles governing private enterprise is utterly hostile to efficiency in administration. This is so obvious, and is so well-known, that it is impossible to resist the, belief that those who prefer public ownership to private enterprise do so because at heart they like to think that a section of the community is being penalised for the benefit of the rest.