DEFINITIONS 
The amount of the promotion expense may vary within wide 
limits according to the character of the works, the difficulties 
to be overcome and the thoroughness with which preliminary 
investigations are made. Such expenditures are generally much 
less in connection with the additions to an established enter- 
prise than they would be in connection with an original plant 
of the same character and magnitude. 
Reproduction Cost New. — The ascertainment of what it 
would cost to construct an exactly equivalent property, iden- 
tical with that to be valued, is frequently an acceptable 
aid in determining value. Any article which forms a part 
of a revenue-producing property has a value in the service 
which may reasonably be measured by the cost of replacing 
it. Its value in the service may be estimated from the cost 
of installing a new article at the end of the expectancy 
term. Generally the value at some particular time is under 
consideration and it would be theoretically correct to apply 
the prices of material and labor which are current at that 
time in making the estimate of reproduction cost. But con- 
struction was a process requiring time and reconstruction would 
also require time. Furthermore the appraisal may have to 
serve for some time, perhaps for a term of years. It is reason- 
able and logical, therefore, to depart from the strictly theo- 
retical requirement and to adopt, in making such an estimate, 
unit prices which represent average conditions, preferably for 
a period of about 5 years. The instructions to appraisers by 
the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine, in the Kennebec Water 
District Case (1902), (97 Maine 185; 54 Atlantic 6), when the 
properties of the Maine Water Co. were to be valued contained 
the following reference to reproduction cost: 
“The appraisers may properly consider what the existing 
system can be reproduced for. But the cost of reproduction 
will not be conclusive. It will be evidence having some ten- 
dency to prove present value. The inquiry along the line of 
reproduction should be limited to the replacing of the present 
system by one substantially like it.” 
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