Municipal Telephones.

Progress, Volume II, Issue 6, 1 April 1907, Page 209

Municipal Telephones.

In this country we like to have our growl at everything, including the telephone system, but no one has ever gone so far as to propose the substitution of private enterprise for the State control which is both cheap and effective In the land of our fathers the matter is viewed with diffeient eyes Just at present the municipalisation of the telephones is much under discussion and with results not altogether favourable to the municipal principle. The leading case among those discussed is that of the Town of Portsmouth, where the Town Council has been for jrears working the telephone system. At the investigation made a great deal of complaint was established that the management had charged revenue to capital, had six pages of bad debts, extending back to the beginning of the undertaking, that they had had defalcations, that names of men who had no existence were on the pay rolls, that the disconnected stations were never deducted, that therefore the statistics were not trustworthy, and that the undertaking had got entirely beyond the control of the Chairman The Chairman admitted the indictment, and had nothing better to offer by way of defence than that the Committee, having thought the manager a capable man, was bound to regard him as such, apparently until something dreadful disclosed the contrary. The opponents of municipalisation are consequently making much capital However, the old proverb about the inability of a single swallow to make a summer has found its way out here and we can wait for more