ism becomes apparent when we reflect upon the present popular attitude with respect to government. Not only do we not appreciate the excellences of government services as we would if they were rendered by private corporations, but we have only a fractional part of the patience with the weaknesses and mistakes of government which we have when we must endure the result of similar weaknesses and mistakes of private individuals or private corporations. A comparison of the services rendered by the post-office and the express companies is quite to the point. The post-office renders better service on the whole for far less money, and it takes much more trouble to accommodate the general public. The efforts and the success of the post-office in tracing addresses and in delivering letters and parcels to the one to whom they are sent are little short of marvellous. The author, when living in Baltimore, has frequently received mail packages sent by mistake to Boston, and when packages and letters have been sent to Baltimore it seemed to make no difference whatever how they were addressed, as they always reached him safely and quickly. Elsewhere he has had similar experience. Everyone who has had experience with the express companies knows that they make little effort to find one, and if they do not at once discover the address of the person to whom a package is sent, they frequently drop a postal card into the post-office with the same address as that given on the package, and the post-office has no difficulty in finding the person not discovered by the express company. The express companies have regular printed forms on postal cards for informing persons that it has not been possible to find them, and then these postal cards are addressed as the express parcels have been. It may not

be out of place to give one illustration. Some time since the author had occasion to send a parcel from Madison to Washington, but the parcel was misdirected to a wrong number of the street. The express company sent a postal stating that there was no such number and the parcel could not be delivered. The person to whom the parcel had been sent was notified by a postal card misdirected just as the parcel had been, that the parcel was awaiting him at the express office, and the postal was delivered promptly. So far as speed is concerned, the author may say that for some five years he had occasion frequently to use both the post-office and the express companies, and he never knew an instance in which the post-office parcel did not reach its destination sooner than the express parcel, when both were sent to the same place at the same time.1 Others who have tried experiments of this kind, or who will reflect upon their experiences, will be able to substantiate what is here said, and yet the facts are far from being generally appreciated. It is supposed that a safety and celerity greater than .the facts warrant are furnished by the express company, and the responsibility for loss, which it is generally believed the express companies bear, is frequently rendered illusory by devices too numerous to be mentioned.

Many services rendered by private corporations are such in quality that they would not be tolerated were they public services. Let the reader, when making a journey on a railway, imagine it operated by the govern

1 The manuscript of the present work serves as a good illustration. At the request of the publishers it was sent by express to Boston, Mass. It was given to the express agent in Madison, Wis., March 15, and was delivered in Boston five days later; namely, March 20. Had it been sent by mail at the same time, it would have been delivered March 17.

ment, and ask himself what objections would be made to the service, provided its quality should not change at all. When the author made a trip from Baltimore, Md., to Dunkirk, N.Y., via Rochester and Buffalo, some time since, it occurred to him that it would not be an altogether bad idea, imitating Mr. Bellamy, to dream that our railways had passed under government ownership, and were controlled by the government; and then to describe the trip as it actually occurred, pointing out the annoyances and inconveniences suffered, and to show how such annoyances and inconveniences would be impossible with a system of free private industry, with its natural desire to please. The line of argument used by so-called orthodox political economists of the present time with regard to private enterprise could be followed. Attention would first be called to the fact that the upper berth in the sleeping-car was lowered, although it was unoccupied; then to the fact that the oil lamps smoked and gave a feeble light, although railways elsewhere had adopted electric lighting or gas, even in the second-class passenger coaches; and further, to the fact, that such a little convenience as a hood to cover the lamps, and to prevent their shining into the eyes of some of the occupants of the upper berths, had not been adopted. It could be shown conclusively that all these abuses could only exist under a system of government ownership. Attention would then be called to the fact that passengers were obliged to wait three-quarters of an hour in Rochester, and five or six hours in Buffalo, where a change was made from the New York Central to the Lake Shore Railway, the Lake Shore train leaving according to schedule time, five minutes before the New York Central train arrived. It could be proved beyond all doubt that under a private

system such gross neglect of the convenience of the travelling public could not possibly take place. After a description of the trip, as a dream of experiences under government ownership, the dreamer would wake up and find that it had all actually taken place under private ownership. Then the query would be, "How could it happen?"

Had the classical economist visited Baltimore a few years ago, under the impression that the street-car lines were owned and operated by the city, it is easy to imagine what he would have said. The accommodations for the public, at certain times of the day, were entirely inadequate, and travel was slow, almost beyond comparison. Our economist, under the hypothesis mentioned, would have repeated for us the old phrase: "The government stroke is slow," and the people would have been invited to try active, alert private enterprise. This same person visiting the street in Baltimore called the York Road, would have found it as disgusting a city street, perhaps, as could be found in any city which could with reason boast of a considerable degree of wealth and culture. Looking at the muddy, ill-kept street, poorly paved, full of depressions filled with water, and turning his eyes to the street-car tracks, elevated several inches above the surface, an unsightly inconvenience, and observing the general absence of sidewalks, and the poor quality of the walks where they did exist, he would have said: "This is conclusive against municipal enterprise." Careful inquiry would have revealed the fact, however, that all which he beheld was, like the street-car lines, private enterprise; for the York Road was a toll-road, the unsightly and inconvenient car tracks were maintained by a private corporation,

and the sidewalks, where they existed, were purely individual enterprises.

These illustrations might be continued indefinitely. It has been necessary to give such illustrations at some length, because they are of great importance in illustrating the fact that any careful observer will notice that we are more impatient with government enterprise than with private industry. We are dealing with psychological phenomena. If we had collective management of industry, the collectivity, or those administering it, would be held responsible for whatever did not suit us; and the psychological result of this concentration of dissatisfaction would be a revolutionary state of mind.

The outcome of socialism, then, it is to be apprehended, would be such an amount of dissatisfaction that one of two things would happen: either socialism would result in a series of revolutions, reducing countries like England and the United States to the condition of the South American republics, and rendering progress impossible; or the dissatisfaction would cause a complete overthrow of socialism, and a return to the discredited social order.

It may be said, in reply, that the higher standard. which would be set for government enterprises argues a strength in socialism. This is only true providing that we have a more intelligent and philosophical population than any population which can anywhere be found at present. It is, however, an argument for the extension of government industry along certain well defined lines, as fast as public opinion can be educated in such manner as to appreciate and to support public enterprise.

Closely connected with the weakness of socialism, which has just been discussed, is the objection that the selfishness of designing and unscrupulous men interposes