operate, beginning with 1906, a line of boats on the Thames. The first two years the undertaking resulted in a deficit of £90,683 ($441,626). The service was abandoned one or two years later. The 30 boats, which had cost, in 1906, £7,000 each, were sold in a lot for £18,204. The Council also took upon itself the demolition and reconstruction of a certain number of cheap lodgings. Therefore, in the way of actual municipal industrial services, it has managed a boat line upon the Thames, demolished and reconstructed cheap lodgings, and is now operating tramways.

The partisans of public operation say, none the less, that, "in principle, municipal ownership has been accepted." Only those who are honest add "but public opinion has confined it within very narrow limits." Moreover, the elections of 1912 have kept the progressives in the minority.1

5. According to an article in the Fortnightly Review, of January, 1905, it is in Russia that local public ownership and operation have been most widely extended. The sale of agricultural implements, medicines, magic lanterns, translations of Molière and Milton, the expurgated novels of Dostoiewski, sewing machines and meat are among Russian public enterprises. It is said also that it is useless for cities to demand subsidies from the government. The stock answer of the administration to all requests for aid is: Municipalize. This advice is easy and costs nothing. 'Claude W. Mullins, L'Activité Municipale de Londres, Revue Économique Internationale, 1910.

6. Ownership and operation on a national scale have been most widely developed in New Zealand. The constitution of 1852 gave to legislators of that country all possible authority without other restriction than "to do nothing repugnant to the English law." Nor are their powers limited, as in the United States, by a supreme court.

New Zealand is isolated. It has no competitors. It has large undeveloped resources. It has a territory of 271,300 square kilometers (104,344 square miles), or more than half that of France, and a population of 1,044,000 people, or 4 inhabitants per square kilometer (10 inhabitants per square mile). Naturally the experiments of a restricted population, distributed over a vast area, have not the same importance as those attempted by a population of several million inhabitants concentrated within narrow boundaries.

In a work entitled State Socialism in New Zealand 1 Messrs. Le Rossignol and Stewart give us a complete picture of the Socialist enterprises which have been attempted there.

Most of the soil was originally government land. As we shall see further on, the government has not retained possession of it for the purpose of exploiting it.

The real development of governmental activity is chiefly due to the energy of one man, Sir Julius Vogel. At his instance a government life insurance system was established in 1869. In 1870 he outlined a

'State Socialism in New Zealand, by James Edward Le Rossignol, Professor of Economics in the University of Denver, and William Downie Stewart, Barrister at Law, Dunedin, New Zealand, I volume in 12mo, George C. Harrop & Co., London.

vast policy of public works, calling for an expenditure, in the course of 10 years, of £10,000,000 ($48,700,000), a sum which was actually doubled within that period. In 1876 he abolished provincial boundary lines, took over the land and the railways, and burdened the state with a fully developed administrative organization, the expenses of which were paid for by taxation, and carried out only with the help of loans and a heavy debt.

In 1879 New Zealand went through a crisis which would have ruined her if she had not been saved by the application of refrigeration to the transportation of meat. Even with that help it took her 16 years to recover.

I shall not speak here of the social legislation introduced by William Pember Reeves, from 1890 to 1895, which has frequently been remodeled.

New Zealand has owned the telegraph since 1865; the railways since 1876; the telephone since 1884. National coal mining and accident insurance were taken up in 1901, and fire insurance in 1903, at rates which render any competition impossible. From time to time the government has undertaken the operation of small industries, such as the purchasing of patents for the prussic acid process, a right to which the state leases to miners for a certain fee. The management of the oyster beds of Auckland, the establishment of fish hatcheries, the stocking of the rivers. with trout, and the establishment of resorts for tourists and invalids are also among New Zealand government enterprises.

But, although New Zealand represents the maxi

mum of effort in the way of Socialist enterprises, few industries are directly managed by the government.

"Scarcely a month passes," says Mr. Guy H. Scholefield, "without some convention passing a cheerful resolution demanding that the government should step in and operate some new industry for the benefit of the public. Now it is banking; to-morrow bakeries; over and over again some moderate reformers have called upon the government to become controllers of the liquor traffic; once upon a time it was importuned to become a wholesale tobacco-seller; more than once to purchase steamers to fight the supposed monopoly of existing lines." 1

"But," say Le Rossignol and Stewart, "notwithstanding these demands, the feeling seems to be growing that the government should not move too rapidly in the direction of State Socialism."

7. In nationalization of the soil New Zealand has had an experience, the more interesting in that most of the soil was once government land. Ought the state to have conserved its interest in the land, or was its action wise in transforming it into private property? The following facts regarding this question are to be found in that remarkable work, State Socialism in New Zealand, from which I have already quoted.

The Hon. William Rolleston, who became minister of Public Lands in 1879, held that one-third of the crown lands ought to be leased in perpetuity for a rent of 5 per cent. of the value of land, with a revalu'New Zealand and Evolution, page 58.

ation every 21 years. The resulting resources might be applied to education.

The Upper Chamber granted the right of purchase at the value of the prairie land, or £1 per acre, after any prospective property holder should have cultivated one-fifth of his claim. Socialist legislation developed when the Liberal party, having acquired a majority in the elections of December 5, 1890, came into power on the strength of two issues, agitation against the great property holders, and agitation of workmen whose salaries had fallen since 1879 and who, in the month of November, had organized an unsuccessful strike.

John Ballance, head of the Cabinet in 1891, and John McKenzie, minister of Public Lands, were ardent partisans of government and property reform. Together they put in force five acts, one after the other, which have since undergone several modifications. Ballance, also a partisan of nationalization of the soil, was anxious that one-third of its lands should remain under the control of the state, to be leased by it, however, with periodic revaluation. His plan fell through. McKenzie granted leases for 999 years at a fixed rental of 4 per cent. on the capital value of the land at the time the lease was taken up, without revaluation. The area which could be held by one man was limited to 640 acres for firstclass land, and 2,000 acres for second-class land. The system received the name of "the eternal lease." At this rate of lease, the government would lose more by way of land tax than it got by way of rent.

But, at the end of 10 years, the perpetual tenants