ELEMENTS DESERVING SPECIAL CONSIDERATION 305 
than the costs which were incurred by the owner of the property. 
The losses in the early years, on the same chances that there 
would be loss, would have confronted the public as it confronted 
the private enterprise. The cost of establishing business is, 
therefore, an element apart and while perhaps in some measure 
and under a multiplication of facts relating to many enterprises, 
the cost of establishing business may be some guide to what the 
normal going value should be, it will be more logical to treat this 
cost either as a part of the capital legitimately in the enterprise, 
or taking the other extreme, as a business loss to be amortized 
out of earnings within a reasonable time. 
While the costs of establishing the business, including early 
losses and expenditures for unsuccessful work, are not a direct 
measure of going value, they are, nevertheless, in so far as they 
were legitimate, of that class of expenditures which should, as 
already stated, come back to the owner of the property sooner 
or later. The mere knowledge that this is the case, or the prob- 
ability that the owner will some time recover them, adds value 
to the property. To add them in the exact amount shown by 
the cost records in any particular case would not, invariably, be 
a fair procedure. The owner who builds with care and under 
the best expert advice, and who pushes his work forward as 
rapidly as the market to be served will justify, and who enters 
immediately upon a profitable business without any lean years, 
is entitled to a reward for his able management and the success 
of his enterprise. The “ going concern value ” of a plant con- 
structed under such favorable circumstances is as great as the 
‘ going concern value ”’ of other plants of a similar character but 
burdened perhaps with large expenditure for unsuccessful work 
and for the development of business. 
The combined experience of all utilities of similar character 
should in the long run establish the addition which should be 
made to the earnings, either to amortize a fair allowance for this 
class of expenditures in a reasonable time or to provide an ade- 
quate return thereon if treated as investment or as an increment 
of the value of the going concern. In the light of this conclusion