MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT.

Evening Star, Issue 11701, 6 October 1902, Page 2

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT.

TO THK IOI'tT.IR. Sir.— T heg Id thank you for lh>> inwtion of my let I w- in. ' Mt;ir-.' ;in<l Bioro jyartioTikiily for your

Hereto. Sl'his hitter, however, seems to mo to call for some remark. In assuming ignorance mi the part of your American correspondent, I did no!, ""forget that knowing what goes on in the world constitutes part of a newspaper's business." I have a close ecquaintancc with the City of Liverpool, ■which is in question, and also with other cities in tire United Kingdom whose municipal undertakings outnumber those of Liverpool, and anyone knowing them closely must be of opinion that the amalgamation of their municipal undertakings is neither possible nor desirable. The person who has the say m affairs of municipal government is not the politician, either English or .American, but the ratepayer, and without his consent such an amalgamation is impossible. In eases where the growth of the large towns has brought them closely adjacent to smaller ones, the amalgamation has, in most cases, bef-u already carried out, and will probably continue to be carried out whenever desirable. 'Hie identity of Bootle, for'instance, has of late years been swallowed up in that of Liverpool: but this is not the sense in which your correspondent seems to suggest the " Morganising" of municipal undertakings. Britain, in this respect, oilers no field to the enterprising politician, Yankee or otherwise. New Zealand cities —Dunedin, for instance, with.'its hall'-dcwen municipal councils—might offer such a Held. To speak, however, of " Morganising" municipal undertakings seems to me to bo quite wrong. "Morgan." enterprise, I take it, means the arualgaanation of various private undertakings for the purpose of exploiting a particular industry to its utmost possible limits for the benefit of tite shareholders in the combine, irrespective of the interests of the consumers or those, otherwise dependent on the industry. Municipal enterprise, on the other hand, seems to me to mean (bat the community, being the consumers of any particular commodity, themselves undertake the production and distribution of this commodity and get tho, benefits in the way of profits and a cheaper supply themselves. This latter 1 repeat is the. greatest protection the British taxpayer has against trusts and private monopolies.—T am, etc., Mrrsicir.w.. October 3.