political and social advantages to the whole public, incomparably superior to those obtainable previously from private performance of the same service. I say nothing about the ultimate method of managing these and other kinds of business. Until we have developed and applied, much beyond present standards, the policy and practice of social agency on the part of individuals in the conduct of business, direct public control, and even public management of many kinds of business is the dictate of reason, of prudence and of patriotism. The town which does not today own or control its gas, electric lights, water supply and street railway rights, is presumably a town of low grade both in economic intelligence and in civic virtue.
If a man is too lazy to brush his own coat and adjust his own cravat, and if he have money to spare, it is his legal privilege to hire a valet. That functionary is a precious fool if he does not make his master pay roundly for the service. If the citizens of a town are so absorbed in their more particular business, or so unskillful in public combination that they prefer to depend upon private enterprise for the supply of such general wants as those just specified, it is cause for public congratulation if private caterers presently grow so rich that the public at last grows jealous. Enormous private gains from operation of franchises to supply these public needs is, in itself, evidence not so much of the culpability of the corporations as of the unthrift and political inefficiency and supineness of the people.
I venture a single reference to the practicability of improvement in the relations discussed. We are just fairly entering upon the observing and describing and analyzing stage of social relations. Our national and state and municipal governments have already done an enormous amount of necessary preliminary work in gathering and organizing essential information. Popular and systematic thought is asserting its freedom from arbitrary conventional philosophies. A quickened social consciousness is assuming the rigt, the privilege, the duty of life—"life more abundant," in the individual and in society. As never before in the history of
