132 
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 stu 
pendous 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 Swit 
zerland 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.