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PUBLIC  UTILITIES  —REGULATION  BY
TAXATION*

T HE  following  thoughts  are  prompted  by  a  desire
to  make  some  contribution,  however  small,  to
the  elucidation  of  a  problem  that  to-day  is  clamouring
for  solution.  The  chapter  is  a  first  essay  at  the  subject
and  contains  tentative  views  as  well  as  settled  opinions.
In  this  country  of  ours,  in  the  last  half  century,  have
grown  up  new  and  great  public  utility  undertakings,
some  of  which  in  a  short  generation  have  taken  on  stupendous ­
  proportions.  Their  nature  is  neither  wholly
public  nor  wholly  private,  but  partakes  in  differing
ratio  of  both,  and  is  best  described  as  quasi-pubiic.

Ownership  or  Regulation

It  is  admitted  that  one  of  two  things  must  come,
viz.,  either  these  public  utilities  must  be  owned  by  the
public,  or  they  must  be  regulated  by  law.
Public  ownership,  it  is  objected,  may  be  all  right
under  comparatively  pure  civic  conditions,  as  in  Switzerland ­
  or  in  Glasgow,  but  public  ownership  is  not  safe
where  there  is  graft.  Of  taxation  it  can  be  asserted
that  it  is  likely  to  be  safe  and  sane,  graft  or  no  graft.
Thus  a  conservative  public  hesitates  to  accept  public
ownership  as  the  right  way  out,  for  a  country  so  young
and  expanding  as  ours,  until  a  higher  standard  of  civic
virtue  and  administrative  capacity  is  attained,  prefer-•
  The  prime  concern  of  this  paper  is  not  taxation  for  revenue,  but  taxation  as  an
instrument  of  regulation.