THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON CHICAGO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. PUBLIC OWNERSHIP HAS FAILED BY YVES GUYOT EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF THE JOURNAL DES ECONOMISTES, PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIÉTÉ THE COBDEN CLUB OF GREAT BRITAIN, FORMER VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE MENT AND MINISTER OF PUBLIC WORKS, ETC., ETC. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY H. F. BAKER New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY All rights reserved Transport. PREFACE The chief difficulty in preparing this book has been to make a coherent arrangement of the material, as the various sources from which it has been gathered are more or less incomplete. Indeed the obstacles in the way of presenting a true picture of industrial enterprises, as operated by states and local governments, can scarcely be exaggerated. The partisans of government and municipal ownership of every species of public utility have assumed a distinctive title. They call themselves representatives of the movement for direct operation (Représentants de la Régie Directe). Their leader in France is Edgard Milhaud, occupying the chair of Political Economy at the University of Geneva, where he makes a special point of emphasizing Socialism.1 In a little periodical, entitled Annales de la Régie Directe, he presents the case for all government and municipal undertakings, although his enthusiasm frequently receives cruel setbacks, as in the suicide of the Mayor of Elbeuf. He has also published several articles for the purpose of demonstrating that accidents are much less frequent upon government railways than upon the lines of private companies. We shall see later (Book 3, Chapter 'See La Démocratie Socialiste Allemande, Paris, F. Alcan. |