The kinds of political units.

1. Local political units generally acquire only industries whose products must be used in the place where produced. The word industry is used here in a broad sense, including agents of psychic income not usually so classed, such as public parks. The grouping of publicly owned industries according to the size and importance of the political units cannot be exact, because some classes of industries are owned by several kinds of political units. Yet, especially with application to American conditions, an approximate classification may be made on this principle. Federal states consist of three main groups of political units: national, provincial, and local. Provincial units are the largest subdivisions, as the American "states," or commonwealths, the German states, and the provinces in other countries. The term local political unit is more complex and may mean county, township, village, city, and school or sanitary district; but most of what is to be said of local ownership refers to cities or to incorporated villages.

Municipal ownership of parks, libraries, etc.

Nearly all public parks and recreation grounds are owned by cities. As population has become more dense, private yards of any extent become impossible, in cities, for all but the wealthy. Public ownership of parks insures recreation grounds to the common man in the most economical way. Of late the movement for large and small public parks and playgrounds has gone on rapidly in American cities. Related to parks are public baths, public libraries, art collections, museums, zoological gardens, etc. Some have declared that such a policy stops little short of a paralyzing socialism for the masses. Reason and experience fail to reveal any such danger so long as the things supplied gratify the higher tastes - as art, music, literature, innocent social recreation. Not until the necessities of life, as bread, clothing, and houses, are supplied, is encouragement given to the increase of improvident families and to the breaking down of independent character. The means of local communication - streets, roads, bridges - were once owned largely by private citizens. Here and there still are found toll roads and toll bridges built under charters granted a century ago, but tolls on public thoroughfares are for the most part abolished. A public market, where the producer from the farm and the city consumer can meet, is an old institution that is now being established anew in many cities. The providing of apparatus for extinguishing fires is always a public duty; the conveyance of waste water is increasingly a public function; and the supply of pure water, while often a private enterprise in villages, and sometimes in large cities, is increasingly undertaken by public agencies. Public ownership of gas and electric lighting is less common, as the utility supplied is not so essential and the industry is somewhat less subject to monopoly; but the difference is one of degree only. Street-railroads are often under public ownership in Europe; but there has thus far been no case of the kind in the United States, and only one in Canada.

Of bridges, markets, waterworks, etc.

2. The American state owns and conducts industries mainly whose products have a wider territorial use. The American commonwealth has retired from some fields where once it was engaged in industry. Students of American history know that between the years 1830 and 1840 some states engaged largely, even wildly, in the building of canals and undertook to construct railroads, to start banks, and to engage in other enterprises. The undertaking of these industries was determined often by political and by selfish local interests, and their operation often was wasteful. A few enterprises succeeded, the most notable of these being the Erie Canal in New York. The unsuccessful ones remained worthless property in the hands of the state or were sold to private companies, as in the case of the Pennsylvania railroad. This reckless state enterprise was a bitter lesson in public ownership, and even after seventy-five years is not without effect on public opinion. For a long time no proposal for public ownership could have a fair hearing in America. But railroads and canals are publicly owned, and more or less successfully operated, in many foreign countries, as in Prussia and other German states, in Switzerland, and in the new states of Australia.

American failures in state industry.

State ownership of various kinds.

There has been recently a rise of interest in forestry in America. This is especially likely to be a state enterprise wherever the forest tracts are entirely within the limits of the state, as is the case of the Adirondacks in New York. Most of the forests in Germany are either communal or state-owned. The schools, a great industry for turning out a product of public utility, are largely conducted by the American state and by local units rather than by the nation or by private enterprise. The state encourages researches in the arts and sciences, and gives technical training. A variety of minor enterprises have been undertaken by states to supply salt, phosphate, banking facilities, even some manufactures. In the prisons and public institutions, states, such as New York, that have adopted the system of labor on public account engage in agriculture and manufacturing on a large scale, the products, amounting to millions of dollars annually, being used almost entirely by public agencies.

National ownership of various kinds.

3. The nation owns and controls many industries of the widest use and most general interest. Some industries grow out of the political needs of government. Established as a means of communication with military outposts, the post became a convenient means of communication for merchants and other citizens and grew into a great economic institution. In most countries the telegraph is publicly owned and has been annexed to the post, to which it is very closely related in purpose. The national improvements connected with rivers and harbors were first political - that is, they were for the use of the governmental navy; they became, secondly, commercial - for the free use of all citizens engaged in trade; and they continue to unite these two characters. Forestry is most largely undertaken in this country by the national government, doubtless because the large forest areas in the West extend over state boundaries, and because large tracts of public lands were still unsold at the time public attention was attracted to the subject. Since 1890, the policy of reserving great areas for forests, and picturesque districts for national parks, has developed greatly. In some countries mines are thought to be peculiarly fitted for national ownership and control. In Germany, the state owns some coal, salt, and other mines. Coinage and banking are everywhere looked upon as a function of sovereignty, and yet it is no more necessary for a nation to own its own mint in order to control the monetary system than for it to print the banknotes in order to regulate their issue. The American government has its own printing office and therewith its share of troubles with organized labor. The fish commission, and the various branches of the department, cooperate with private industry in many ways. In Germany, compulsory insurance is provided for the working-man. This hasty survey suggests that the industries undertaken by government are both varied in nature and large in extent, although small in proportion to the mass of private industry.