MUNICIPALISM IN ENGLAND.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9796, 16 July 1903, Page 3

MUNICIPALISM IN ENGLAND.

*~ Municipal ownership has made great strides m England. The London Tunes, m a series pi articles, attempted to stem the advance. Without entering into the question of the advantages or disadvantages of municipal ownership, we here give a summary of some oi the facts collected by the London Times and communicated to Harper's Weekly by Sydney Brooks. The Corporations of Glasgow — that is to say, the City Council — supply the people with water, gas, electric light, cable and electric cars, and telephones ; they control 11 public parks and galleries, 13 batlis and wash-houses, a fruit and vegetable market, dead*ineat market, a home cattle market, two foreign cattle markets, cheese market, a bird and dog raarket, and an old clothes market, four slaughter houses and offices, four hospitals, and one burying ground; they are the owners of 2488 municipal houses, 78 lodging houses, of which they manage seven themselves ; a family home, which I they also direct ; 372 shops, 49 stores, 43 warehouses, 43 workshops, 12 halls, two churches, two hotels, one theatre, one studio, one pawn office, one nursing home, one powder mill, one laundry, one bakehouse, one golf course, and one gospel tent; they farm over 1000 acres of land, where large crops are grown, including all the hay used m the stables of the cleansing department, as well as crops of oats\ wheat, turnips, etc. ; they convert the city sewage into solid matter, and sell it to farmers for manure; they carry on business as market gardeners; they possess stone quarries and 900 railway waggons ; they build street cars, reclaim bogs, conduct a civic granary, raise 5000dol a year on the clinker from the refuse-cremating furnaces, collect and sell waste-paper, and are not above melting and disposing of the solder from the old tin cans they find m the dust heaps. Glasgow is an extreme, but by no means unique, example of what is going on all over the Kingdom. There are about ten or a dozen towns m England where municipal sterilised milk for babes is supplied. The local governing authorities not only furnish the milk, but feeding bottles with it— the purchaser being required to bring the teats at specified intervals to the municipal milk store that their cleanliness may be tested. From this to the municipalisation of the entire milk supply is only a moderate step. ; It has not yet been taken, but sooner or later it ' inevitably will be. Several local governing authorities run saloons. Several others have set up homes for inebriates. General hospitals are still, for the most part, left to the support of private charity, but sanatoria for consumptives, smallpox, and scarlet fever hospitals are common objects of municipal benevolence. In one town tubes of serum are prepared out of public funds for cases of diphtheria and puerperal fever, and sold at a nominal price to all who apply for them. Cemeteries and crematoria under municipal ownership and management literally abound. The control of local markets has always, and quite properly, been vested m the local authority; but municipal markets are now swiftly leading to municipal slaughter houses, municipal cold storage houses, municipal ice factories. Cardiff has a municipal fish market. Torquay breeds rabbits on a large tract of land where water is collected for the municipal waterworks, and the profits from the sale of them go to reducing the rates, the experiment having answered so well that the City Council has now gone m for sheep-farming. Tunbridge Wells grows hops, and Liverpool beet roots, on their sewage farms. At Colchester there are municipal oysters. Brighton and several other towns own racecourses ; a few have built theatres ; West Ham not only manufactures its own paving stones, but sells its surplus to contractors. Many local authorities drive a good business m the residual products of gas — Manchester, for instance, trading m soap, oil, tallow and mortar. Most of the Corporations that supply gas are prepared also to furnish stoves and all the necessary fitings. Sheffield undertakes plumbing work as a side issue to supplying water. Liverpool has a municipal tailoring establishment where the uniforms of the town officials and employees are made. Battersea cuts all the timber required for municipal buildings and street paving m its. own sawmill. Cardiff does the same. Manchester manufactures for itself nil • the waggons, brooms, and. brushes needed by the local street-cleaning department. .