cated Louis Barthou in the affair, in the latter's capacity of minister of Public Works, although Barthou's antecedents did not point to him as especially fitted to carry out such a measure.

6. One of the chief incentives to the establishment of a government monopoly is the hope of procuring resources without the stigma of an apparent fiscal object attached. It is one way of making the taxpayers pay taxes without perceiving that they are taxes. As a matter of fact they are simply misrepresented taxes. Appeals of their promoters to the moral and hygienic interests of the nation, in order to effect the desired object, are equally disingenuous.

For example, the alcohol monopoly in Switzerland was submitted to the people as designed to combat alcoholism, while putting an end to the ohmgeld duties, a sort of internal revenue duty. As for alcoholism, the financial history of the individual cantons, which have been receiving their share of the profits of the monopoly for the purpose of fighting it, proves just how relative has been the attention devoted to the eradication of that particular evil.

But there was still another motive, although it has been mentioned only in conversation. In Switzerland every quart of alcohol is produced from potatoes. Growers found that the distillers were buying their potatoes too cheaply. Therefore, at the opportune moment, the Federal government increased the purchase price of domestic alcohol, saying to the potato grower: "You see, we have increased the price of alcohol. Whereas, in Austria, alcohol costs 20 or 30

francs, we in Switzerland pay more than 80 francs for it; and we are doing so in order that you can sell your potatoes at a good price. In other words we are granting you a subsidy."

When the monopoly of alcohol was established in Russia it was repeated in every key that the object in view was moral and not financial. It was established, in the first place, in order to ensure to the moujik (peasant) absolutely pure alcohol. Emphasis was placed on the characteristic retail shops of the government, kept by officials who can have no interest in increasing consumption. There is neither chair, corkscrew, nor glass in the shop; therefore, the moujik, after buying, must go elsewhere to drink.

But, in 1912, the receipts from the monopoly on alcohol were estimated at 763,990,000 roubles, out of a total income of 2,896,000,000 roubles, or 26 per cent. It is, therefore, easily surmised that officials charged with the sale of alcohol would be held to a strict account if devotion to the temperance cause should happen to bring about a deficit in the budget. The moral aspect of the monopoly is completely effaced by fiscal interest.

M. Augugneur heads a local and national ownership party. Why should he advocate public ownership? Simply in order to have a platform-a reason for party existence. The future of municipal or government undertakings is a secondary matter. What is necessary is an issue which will lead to political action and to immediate power.

If any enterprise inaugurated by a mayor or by a

minister is difficult and useless neither the mayor, the minister, the municipal councillors, the deputies, nor the senators who have brought it into being will be called upon to bear any material responsibility for it. The taxpayers of to-day and to-morrow must assume the entire burden. Sometimes the failure of an undertaking involves a decrease in the influence of the politicians who were its promoters. But frequently it increases their importance in the public eye.

The risks which the Freycinet program carried with it; the uselessness of a quantity of the work included in it; the burdens which have accrued from the operation of railroads; an excess of 30 per cent. in the construction of navigable ways which are not yet finished, all this has in no way injured the prestige of the author of that program. The advocates of the purchase of the Western line are coping cheerfully with the deceptions it has engendered, and they imagine and rightly-that no one, or almost no one, has ever placed in parallel columns their promises and the actual facts.

Again, had M. Barthou conducted a private business after the fashion in which he carried through the purchase of the Western road, he would long since have been branded as a defrauding bankrupt. As a public official the state has rewarded him for his efforts in this direction with the premiership of France.

CONCLUSIONS.

1. Any private undertaking has a definite objective point-gain; and a certain test-gain or loss.

2. The motive behind municipal and national undertakings is usually political or administrative influence for their promoters.

3. The promoters of public undertakings escape all material and generally-all moral penalty.

CHAPTER IV

GOVERNMENT AND MUNICIPAL TRADING OPERATIONS

1. The Report of Gustave Schelle to the International Statistical Institute.-List of Public Industrial Operations. -Postal, Telegraph and Telephone Systems.-Mints. 2. Public Trading Enterprises of Denmark, Switzerland, Holland, Italy, France, Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Germany.

3. The United Kingdom and the United States.

4. The London County Council.

5. The Municipal Activity of Russia.

6. New Zealand.-Government Socialism More Fully Developed Than in Any Other Country.-Socialist Enterprises.

7. Nationalization of the Soil in New Zealand.

8. Government and Municipal Trading Operations Restricted in Scope.

I. When zealots in the cause of "a transference of trading and commercial undertakings to public bodies" declare that it is a general and irresistible movement, they are mistaking their hopes for an accomplished fact. Public trading enterprises in actual existence are relatively few.

During the session of the International Statistical Institute of 1909, at the suggestion of MM. Arthur Raffalovich and Gustave Schelle, a committee was