No. 7.

CDe » • • .
Anti-Municipal

. .

Conspiracy Exposed
By

.

.

.

H. T. MUGGERIDGE.
One Penny.

CITY

BRANCH

PAMPHLETS.

The purpose of t h e City Branch in publishing
these pamphlets is to supply from inside the P a r t y the
literature which the Branches use for propaganda and
other purposes. P a r t of the Profits are to be handed
over to t h e funds of t h e National Administrative
Council.

No. i . T h e I n d e p e n d e n t L a b o u r P a r t y :
W h a t it is, a n d W h e r e it
stands.
2nd Edition Revised.

L a b o u r L a w s for W o m e n .
3rd Edition.

Imperialism.
Commercialism a n d Child
Labour.
W i l l i a m Morris, by J. W. MAGKAIL
Socialism for Children, by
KATHARINE BEUCE GLASIER.

T h e . Anti-Municipal Conspiracy
Exposed.
H. T. MUGGEBIDGE.
Other Pamphlets are in preparation.

T h e s e are t h e b e s t p r o p a g a n d i s t p a m p h l e t s
issued.
<>

LONDON :

Printed by VAIL & Co., 170, FARRINGDON ROAD, E . C ; and
Published by T H E CITY OF LONDON BRANCH OF
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THE ANTI-MUNICIPAL CONSPlRACy
EXPOSED.

N

OTHING is more amusing in the attack now being
made on municipalism than the air it generally has
given to it of being conducted by disinterested persons
who, at considerable trouble and expense to themselves,
are anxious to save the community from some impending
calamity.
Everybody foresaw that, as the enterprise of
the municipalities extended, various interests would be
up in arms, but few imagined that the naturally fierce
resistance of these interests would take the form of a
movement ostensibly to save society from itself.
Yet
such is the case. The members of syndicate® who have
been unsuccessful in their attempts to obtain provisional
orders to supply electric light, or to run trams or light
railways, in towns where the municipalities are prepared
to provide or run them themselves, have gone about the
country warning us all in solemn tones that we! were
advancing by leaps and bounds towards Socialism, the
word " Socialism" being used not in its strict sens© of
society organizing its own activities, but as an equivalent
for the introduction into existing social arrangements of
the principles of Bill Sykes. Sir George Livesey, the
Chairman of the South Metropolitan Gas. Co., who is not,
however, an unsuccessful opponent of local authorities,
provides us with a very good instance of this mock patriotic attitude. At a shareholders' meeting held on August
14th of the present year, when the business in hand might
reasonably be supposed to have been the announcement
of the dividend to be received by expectant shareholders,
he appears to have experienced no difficulty in detaining
his audience whilst he treated them, to a lecture on
municipal trading. I n the course of this lecture he re"niui^ed " Certain people called Progressives had got
thiehisely6® elected on the various local authorities, many

2

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

of whom were simply Socialists in disguise; and the
result had been the spending of the ratepayers' money
with most lavish hand by embarking on all sorts of trading
ventures of which they knew nothing, and of which they
made a great mess." Here we remark the anxiety of the
speaker to pose as the particular friend and saviour of
the ratepayers. To what extent, then, in his capacity of
director of a gas monopoly supplying ratepayers, has he
earned the right to become the champion of those nruohappealed-to individuals? Let us see.
Dr. Sidney Davies, M.D., Medical Officer of Health for
Woolwich, a borough within the enormous area supplied
by the South Metropolitan Gas Co., writing a few days
after this speech was delivered, says : " The South Metropolitan Gas Co. obtained power from Parliament to siupply gas of inferior illuminating power at a lower price
on condition of offering to provide every consumer with
improved burners with which a better light is got froir
the inferior gas than the gas formerly supplied gave with
the common cheap burners. That Parliament did not
insist on the offer being made effectual by a housed*
house visitation of the Company's employee® prepared tc
fix then and there the improved burners can only be
ascribed to the lack of vigilance of certain Metropolitar
members. The result is that in thousands of workers'
homes more gas is burnt, more air is consumed, and more
poisonous products emitted with consequent injury to
health and waste of money. The shareholders may be
enriched, but the consumers are sacrificed."
So much for Sir George's tender regard for the ratepayer. This is the Company whose chief spokesman
warned his shareholding audience that " the present rage
for municipal trading was likely to produce disaster."
We see now by whom the disaster was to be feared, for,
as Dr. Davies point® out, it is impossible to belieyevthat
" any Metropolitan Borough Council which possesSed:- its

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

3

own gas works would have grudged the slight expense
and trouble needed to ensure that every house was provided with suitable burners, and so saved both the pockets
and health of the public." The disaster that municipal
trading brings falls on the shareholders of companies
who, if their ga® monopoly were municipalised, would be
unable to make money by such petty means as these.
But the real motive underlying Sir George's earnest
desire to protect the ratepayer from the Socialist is seen
by his note of triumph later over the success with which
he had opposed provisional orders to extend electric lighting for the boroughs of Bermondsey and Woolwich. We
hear a great deal of private enterprise stimulating energy
and brains. Certainly, after reading Sir George Livesey's
account of what he accomplished by means of his, we
cannot doubt it, though whether the community is better
off for Sir George's talents in these directions is another
matter. Woolwich and Bermondsey are both in the area
supplied by the South Metropolitan Gas Co. For those
two boroughs therefore to extend municipal lighting was
to seriously threaten the monopoly possessed by the Company over which Sir George presides.
How therefore
did he act? Why, he went before the Board of Trade
and opposed the granting of the powers applied for except
on condition that the local authorities concerned " made
such a charge for the supply that the revenue for the year
shall not be less than the expenditure." The Board of
Trade having refused to impose this condition, he, with
characteristic persistence, went before the House of Lords'
Committee who finally granted him all he asked.
Now^a careful study of electrical enterprises:—company
as well as municipal—shows that this balance between
expenditure and revenue is very seldom effected in the
first two or three years. I t is only after the undertakinghas got into full working order that a fair test can be
made of its paying properties, and the profits that are

4

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

then made are of course applied to wipe off the earlier
deficits. The impossibility of a local authority hampering
itself at the start of such an undertaking with such a
condition is obvious. I t is certain that no' private electrical concern would consent to do so; and the result is.
just as Sir George intended. Woolwich and Bermondseyi
are still obliged against their will to consume for publicj
lighting and all other purposes the South Metropolitan!
Gas Co.'s expensive and injurious product. His action
has effectually blocked the extension of electric lighting
in those two boroughs, with consequences serious to the
health and prosperity of the inhabitants.
This then is how Sir George has shown his regard for
ratepayers' interests. We see now why his shareholding
audience listened so patiently to his discourse. No doubt
they understood each other perfectly. Meanwhile ratepayers of Woolwich and Bermondsey will doubtless loo>V
upon the gas of " inferior illuminating power " emitting
" poisonous products " to which they are restricted as the
price they pay to Sir George for saving them from
Socialism and be satisfied.
This outburst on the part of Sir George Livesey was,
however, probably an isolated one forced from him b
his zeal on behalf of the particular vested interest he*
represented.
The danger threatening first one interest
and then another was bound to lead to a sort of sporadic
epidemic of anti-municipal virulence. But there is also
a more organized movement yet in its infancy which in
process of time will probably combine all the interests
affected into one powerful defensive alliance. The germ
of this movement can be traced to one particular quarter
—the little coterie of electrical financiers. The early
beginnings of it can be found in the London Chamber of
Commerce, where, some few years since, a committee on
"Municipal Trading" was formed, of which Mr. Sydney
Morse, the legal adviser of the British Electric Traction

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

5

Co., was chairman. The Anti-Municipal movement may
be said to be by the Electrical Group out of the London
Chamber of Commerce. I t owes its origin to no great
political reaction, but to the trade interest of a narrow
but pushful clique. So well was the movement fathered
by this clique that in a very short time the matter was
brought before Parliament, and the House of Commons
appointed a committee to inquire into the whole subject
of Municipal Trading.
Although this Committee collected a mass of evidence, in procuring which the Electrical section of the London Chamber of Commerce
specially distinguished itself, it. has not reported up to the
present, the reason being, it is understood, that the unfortunate electrical interest with all its resources was not
able to collect sufficient evidence to outweigh the unanswerable case presented by the municipalities. Nevertheless, to have got the agitation lifted up to so lofty a
platform as the House of Commons in so short a time was
a feat of which its early pioneers might well be proud.
Temporarily driven back from Parliament the antimunicipal campaign was forced to do its best wherever
opportunities presented themselves in the country at large.
A most noticeable feature of the agitation which ensued
is;the remarkable way in which it appears to be manned
by the multiple directors of electrical and allied companies. I t is no exaggeration to say, " Scratch a lecturer
against municipal trading, in whatever out-of-the-way
place you may find him, and beneath his skin you will
come across an electrical financier." The Right Hon. Sir
H . H . Fowler, M.P., gives an address to the Royal Star
tistical Society on " Municipal Finance and Municipal
Enterprise," the conclusion of which is " t h a t there are
limits" to the extent to which municipal enterprise
should be carried, though he does not state t h e m ; and Sir
H . H . Fowler is Chairman of the National Telephone Co.,
L'td., and of the Power Gas Corporation, Ltd. Before

6

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

a body with the academic associations of the Society of
Arts, Mr. W. L. Madgen, a director of the Electrical
Power Distribution Co., Ltd., and of 17 other electrical
concerns, who less than three years ago> was the advertisement manager of an electrical journal, discourses on the
wickedness of municipal interference with electrical enterprise under the somewhat irrelevant heading, " Industrial
Distribution: the Crux of the Overcrowding Question."
Before the Fabian Society Mr. Gareke reads a paper
intended to prove the utter absurdity of expecting
Town Councils to manage electric tramways with
success, carefully concealing the possibility meanwhile
that he was pecuniarily interested in the amount of
current the electric lights were consuming in the
very room where he was speaking. H e is a director
of no fewer than 38 companies. A t a discussion on the
" Cost of Municipal Trading " at the Society of Arts under
the presidency of Sir Richard Webster, six of the speakers
out of the dozen who took part divided between them 99
paid positions of one sort or another on electrical companies', and these six, it is needles® to say, were all against
municipal enterprise.
I n fact, the number of persons
interested in electrical undertakings who appear to have
specialised on the subject of municipal trading, and to
have arrived quite impartially at the conclusion that it is
leading the country to the dogs, is quite surprising.
By letters to the papers, speeches at literary society
meetings, after dinner allusions, the formation of " .Ratepayers' " and " Industrial Freedom Leagues " (as at Tunbridge Wells, Bradford, etc.), and a hundred other ways,
the anti-municipal ball is kept rolling. But although the
modesty of those who roll it prevents them from beginning letter or speech with " As director of the Electric
Light Monopoly Extension Company, Ltd.," or h As
solicitor to the Little Pedlington Exploitation Syndicate,"
one cannot help feeling that it is the pocket considerations

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

7

to which these connections give rise that account more
than anything else for the views that follow. I n fact,
the anti-municipal movement is not a moral revolt against
what the Times calls " Municipal Socialism," it is simply
the veiled attempt on the part of interested persons to
have the field of public exploitation all to themselves.
A further proof of the interested origin of the agitation
is provided by the methods employed by its advocates. A
cause having for its object the social good would not need
to descend to the lowest forms of partisan chicanery.
As it would be impossible in a short pamphlet to deal
with a tithe of all that has been written and said against
municipalism, let us make the recently published Times
articles on " Municipal Socialism" do duty for the rest.
Nor will this selection do injustice to the agitation. No
matter how low interested persons may have " played the
game," their methods will be paralleled here. The object
being to discredit municipalities, the Times correspondent
will show how easily it can be done by means of newspaper cuttings and a not too scrupulous use of inverted
commas. All the well-known stock-in-trade of the special
pleader is employed. Inuendo' and direct misstatement,
the method of suppression as well as that of suggestion,
A careful perusal of the articles will startle any reader
who has not previously learnt how much mendacity can
be accomplished by means of a paste pot and scissors.
Taking specimens at random, let us deal with the paragraph in Article I I I . , in which it is suggested that " a
good proportion of the value of sites for municipal
dwellings may be written off as ' improvements' and paid
for out of the rates." The word may is not in italics in
the original, but is so printed here to draw attention to
this clear example of the method of inuendo employed.
There can be no purpose in stating that public bodies may
do certain things except to suggest to the unwary reader's
mind that they do do them. If the statement is to be followed up by proofs, well and good; but what evidence

8

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

'Exposed.

does the Times correspondent produce in support of his unsavoury hint? Two or three newspaper clippings, that is
all. Here they a r e : " A t a meeting of the Poplar Borough
Council in March last the Electricity Committee proposed
that a sum of £2,015 which they had expended on new
stone in making good the roads they had disturbed in
carrying out cable trench work should be charged to the
general paving account." Very wrong of the Committee,
no doubt, although we know nothing of the state of the
roads before the new stones were laid down, and for all
we are aware the repair of the thoroughfares in question
may have been overdue and delayed expressly for the
sake of the economy to be effected by doing both things
together (one of the advantages of municipalization by
the way); but what are we to think when, in the very
next sentence, we read " the suggestion was rejected by
the Council." If the Council rejected it, what more does
this mock municipal purist require? Why is such an
instance inserted in such a connection ? I s it not clear
that the secret intention is to poison the mind of the
public by leaving the impression that a Committee's recommendation to do an improper thing—if improper this
was—is equivalent to a proof of the general statement
that municipalities do improper things. But take the
next snipping. " A t a meeting of the Hackney Borough
Council on March 25th, in the course of a discussion on
the finances of the borough, Councillor Kyffin is reported
to have alleged that ' there had been a manipulation of
figures in the electric lighting account, which ought to
have shown clearly what had been the loss in that department. Instead of this, certain amounts had been
allocated to other committees/ " Here we have the uncorroborated statement of a single councillor put forward
in proof of a very damaging accusation against a Council.
We do not even know that they are this person's actual
words, for he is " reported " to have uttered them. W e
are told nothing of the councillor himself, the weight to

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

9

be attached to his words, or what the authorities, who presumably would not let so grave a charge go unanswered,
said in reply.
These are the means by which the writer of these
articles seeks to support his cheap sneers and insinuations. But when, leaving proposals that are rejected by
the Council, and vague charges that are made by single
councillors without an atom of evidence in support, we
come to figures and direct statement, the case breaks
down even more utterly. W e are informed, for instance,
that the South Shields Corporation charges its electrical
department with only £50 for clerical work, although
it is patent to all that much more work than is represented by that payment is done in connection with the
department. Now, what are the facts? Let us go to
headquarters for them. An official letter from Mr. J .
Moore Hayton, the Town Clerk of South Shields, informs
us that in addition to the fifty pounds charged in the
Borough Accountant's department, " for the purpose of
the clerical work of the Electricity Department a staff of
clerks is maintained at the works, the cost of which
during the year ending March 31st last amounted to
£248 l i s . Od. TMs clerical staff keep® the numerous
books of accounts and conducts the correspondence required for the undertaking under the supervision of the
Engineering Staff."
According to this authentic information, which the
Times correspondent, had he been as eager to get the
truth as he was to blacken the Councils, could have obtained for himself, the charge for clerical work debited
to the Electrical Department is not £50 but £298 l i s . Od.
So much for the accuracy of these articles which, according to the portentous leader with which they were ushered
in, were to " fill thinking men with apprehension."
Doubtless they will cause apprehension, but chiefly as to
the veracity and trustworthiness of this leading journal
of the British Press.

10

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

But the bias so freely displayed, even to the point of
distorting facts in this one paragraph, is the dominant
feature of the whole series. General charges are levelled
at the heads of the unfortunate municipalities without the
slightest attempt at proof. " Corporation figures are too
often manipulated."
" When and where ?" asks one,
scanning the article through from beginning to end without finding a scintilla of evidence brought forward to
support this wild statement.
" Government audit in
provincial boroughs tends to throw doubt on the whole
subject of municipal profits from siepculative undertakings." Does it? The Government audit of which
town, please, and date 1 " A list has recently been compiled from official sources of 60 towns which, on a capital
expenditure of £6,000,000 for municipal electric lighting,
lost £92,000 thereon in 1901." Where is the list, and
who compiled the figures? Why are we to believe the
anonymous figures of this jaundiced scribe, and to have
grave doubts of those published by the municipal
authorities ?
Then we have what purports to> be a financial statement for Cardiff issued by—not the municipality, but the
" Cardiff Property Owners' and Ratepayers' Association,"
whatever that may be.
MUNICIPAL TRADING AT CARDIFF; How

IT PAYS.

CARDIFF CORPORATION IN ACCOUNT WITH THE RATEPAYERS.

Capital expenditure on the following adventures—£283,631.
Profits.

£ s.
9 15
—
779 2
—
—
3 13
—

Year ended March 31st, 1901.

d.
3 ..
..
6 ..
..
..
1 ..
..

£792 10 10

Losses.

£

Electric Light
Baths
Central Market
Hayes Fish Market (five weeks)
..
Canton Market
Roath Market
Burial Board (this loss may be further
increased)

s.
—
1,696 15
—
70 5
1,444 7
—

d.
8
0
8

1,157 8 8

Loss
..
.. £4,368 17 0
Deduct Profit .. £792 10 10
Nett Loss

. . £3,576

6 2

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

ll

On examining this ex parte document, it turns out that
these figures represent the revenue balances of each
account after including loan charges. The £3,576 6s. 2d.
is not a dead loss to the Cardiff ratepayers because it includes repayment of loans by means of which they are
gradually becoming the owners of the properties acquired.
It is as though the purchaser of a house through a building society should regard each instalment repaid off loan
as a loss. " These properties," says the Borough
Treasurer, " are freehold, and should, with the exception
of the Baths, become a source of large profit when the
loans are discharged/' Further than this, one asks why,
except that he finds it impossible to be fair, does the
Times correspondent go back to March 31, 1901? The
figures to March 31, 1902, were available long before his
contribution was written, but presumably because they
showed a great improvement on the figures of the previous
year, it was more convenient to suppress them.
The
balance of profit on the electricity account alone, after
deducting sinking fund and interest charges, had risen
from <£9 15s, 3d. (on March 31, 1901) to £1,117 on
March 31, 1902. Of this the Times says nothing.
Is
this its way of loading the dice on behalf of its capitalist
friends?
Turning from the method of inuendo and suggestio
falsi, which, in these articles, like the trail of a serpent
is over them all, we get to the sphere of more legitimate
argument, but we fare no better in the search for an
impartial treatment of the subject. I n the fourth instalment of these newspaper clippings interlarded with comments the effects of municipalization on commercial enterprises is considered.
Here it would be thought that
electric lighting and traction would have been the particular forms of enterprise dealt with, for it is beyond
question that these have suffered most from the growing

12

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

determination of towns not to get into the hands of
monopolistic companies. But to say a word directly on
behalf of the electrical companies would have been to
show the cloven hoof, and as it is of course the Times
chief care to> write ostensibly in the public interest, its
correspondent is compelled to fall back on the sad case
of one Eli Spurdens. Eli Spur dens was a person who was
foolish enough, what time the Leeds people were beginning to bestir themselves over the question of electric
trams, to* start " an omnibus and cab proprietorship,
erecting large premises and building up an extensive
business." When the Leeds Corporation Tramways were
extended that happened which any competent man of
business could have warned him would have happened;
the unfortunate Eli Spurdens found himself in the Bankruptcy Court. Instead of drawing the obvious moral:
When trams are about do not start in the bus line*, the
correspondent winds up this sad case with the following
sympathetic comment: " There is not much probability
of municipal traders undertaking to compensate those
with whose business they interfere." Well, no, there is
n o t ; unless those " t r a d e s " happen to be the proprietorship of slum property, when the scale fixed by the Times
friends in Parliament will be liberal enough. But does
our author wish us to believe that if the Leeds Corporation had not taken over its trams they would not have
appeared at all? And if a Company had brought them
out instead of a Corporation would poor Eli Spurdens'
descent to the Bankruptcy Court have been any the more
delayed? Would, say, the British Electric Traction Co.,
for instance, have compensated the unfortunate gentleman for the loss of his business? One thinks not. We
have the instance of such limited liability concerns as
Lipton's, Ltd., and " The Stores" to instruct us as to
what happens to the little capitalist when the big one
comes along. W h a t case, then, has the Times correspondent against " municipal trading " which doesn't tell

The Anti-Miinicipat

Conspiracy

Exposed.

13

equally powerfully against all trading? May we not say
the municipalities have slain their thousands, but the
mammoth private undertakings of the industrial world
have slain their tens of thousands ?
So eager is the correspondent to make a case against
municipal enterprise, that he apparently acts on the principle that any stick will do* to beat a dog with. I n the
anxiety to score he even forgets the political past of his
own paper. I n Collection IV. there is much anathematization of local authorities for the heavy rating they
impose upon railways.
" There are many country
parishes," we are told, " where a railway company will
pay half the rates, although it has not even a station in
the place. There are others where the proportion paid
by a railway company is 75 per cent.; and there are
some where such a company will pay practically the
whole of the local rates." As usual, the name® of the
place® where such atrocities are committed are not given,
so that it is impossible to test the accuracy or otherwise
of the statement made. But, one asks, how does a fact
of this kind (if fact it is) prove the iniquity of " municipal
socialism " ? I n the first place, what sort of municipal
trading is there in rural districts? and secondly, if there
be any disparity between railway and agricultural rating,
what is more responsible for it than the Agricultural
Rating Act of which the Times was such an ardent supporter? Under that Act agricultural land is relieved of
half the rates, and although a grant is made from the
Imperial Exchequer, such grant being fixed and based on
the local expenditure of a particular year is now totally
inadequate to make up the deficiency, so that a far heavier
burden is thrown upon land used like that of the railway
companies for non-agricultural purposes.
Whatever,
then, may be said as to the unfairness of the existing
method of rating railways, such unfairness, if it exists,
is due to the Legislature far more than to the local

14

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

authority. By such loose methods does the Times seek
to make good its case against the municipalities.
The paragraphs of the Timed articles that we have
taken quite haphazard and submitted to closer investigation have shown how little reliance can be placed on the
facts and figures so hastily jumbled together. To follow
these misstatements in detail would weary the reader and
be aside from the real object of this paper, which is to
show that the whole series of articles simply amounts to
a clumsy piece of special pleading on behalf of interests
which are finding themselves threatened by the growth
of municipal enterprise.
The use made of the figures
showing the total municipal debt of the country, and of
the taxation for the purposes of local expenditure, is proof
clear enough for any impartial purposes that this reading
of the matter is justified to the full. Any fair investigator desiring to put before the public the actual facts
as to' municipal trading would at least distinguish between money spent for purposes with regard to> which the
municipalities have no option, and that spent in pursuance of undertakings they have purposely embarked
upon. We are told that the local taxation in England
and Wales between 1869 and 1899 rose from £17,000,000
to £38,000,000, and the inference the incautious reader
is left to draw is that the whole of this increase is due
to municipal trading; while the fact is that none of it is
so due at all. On the contrary, if we turn to the Local
Taxation Returns for the year 1899-1^00 we shall find
that the local taxation, which had again risen from
£38,000,000 to £40,000,000, was entirely for Poor Law,
School Board, Police, Burial Board, Street Improvement,
Sewerage, Isolation Hospitals, Port Sanitary Authorities,
Lunatic Asylums, Public Libraries and Museums, baths,
washhouses, roads, and so on—all items which even the
Times presumably would admit must be paid for out of
the rates. A t any rate, it would be interesting to know

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

15

which it would omit. Perhaps the public libraries and
museums; in which case it would reduce the total by the
comparatively trifling sum of £19,788!
But surveying
the other purpose© for which the rates are levied there is
not one which can be correctly described as municipal
trading or as not indispensable to the very existence of
the community, organized as it is at present. H a d trams,
electric light, gas, water, sterilized milk, ice, and the
other " t r a d i n g " items which the industrious Times collector has catalogued in his second article, all been in the
hands of the private trader as he desires for the whole
period, this increase in expenditure would have' taken
place just the same, except that such items as poor law
a,nd lunacy might have been heavier, seeing that municipalization lightens the burden of life for the denizens of
our big towns and thus tends to diminish pauperism and
lunacy. Fortunately the same Annual Eeturn will enable
us to give the facts as to the " trading " of the local
authorities in at least four items, viz., Waterworks, Gasworks, Electric Lighting, and Tramways. The total receipts of the local authorities throughout England and
Wales for 1899-1900 under these heads were £12,251,996,
and the outgoings were £7,938,727, showing a balance in
favour of the rates of £4,313,269. This huge sum provides a very handsome sinking fund to pay off in course
of time the capital sum borrowed, as well as all other
expenses incidental to the loans. To imply, in the face
of facts like these, that municipal trading is the cause of
the increase in local taxation is to be guilty of a deliberate attempt to deceive the public.
Another point on which the Times correspondent, with
a persistency worthy of a better cause, shows his bias is
with regard to depreciation. " No allowance whatever/'
he reiterates, " is made for depreciation," and in a debate
on the subject of its trams in the Sheffield City Council
" one member argued that the amount of depreciation

16

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

which ought to be allowed for was £35,000 per annum,
while another member suggested that by unsound bookkeeping one might make a business show a magnificent
profit while all the while one ought to be in the hands of
the Official Receiver."
Here we have another deliberate attempt to bolster
up the case against the public authorities upon the sole
word of apparently foolish members of a City Council.
Instead of relying on impressions created by irresponsible
criticism of this character, let us look into the actual
figures, and, by way of removing them beyond the reach
of all suspicion, let us obtain them from a quarter where
at least no mistake favourable to the public authorities
will be made, viz., Mr. Garcke's Manual of Electrical
Undertakings for 1901-2.
SHEFFIELD CORPORATION TRAMS.
RECEIPTS.
Gross receipts, £108,300

£108,300

I
6

6

9

9

EXPENDITURE.
Gross expenses . . £60,723
Interest . .
\
Repayment
of
Loan . .
[ 25,758
Repairs
and
Maintenance )
Renewal Fund . . 15,000
Balance . .
..
6,817

10

8

0
17

0
2

£108,300

6

9

18 11

With these figures before us we can test the truthfulness of the Times' statements that " nothing is provided
for contingencies " and " No allowance whatever is made
for depreciation."
The amount borrowed for the purposes of the Trams is
£232,802. This at 3 per cent, would be about £7,000.
Deducting this interest, then, from the £25,758 given
above, we have £18,758 for repayment of loans, repairs
and maintenance of track, etc. But in addition to this,
as we see, there is a sum of £15,000 which the Corporation has reserved as " Renewal F u n d " ; adding this to

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

17

the £18,758 we have no less a sum than £33,758 put on
one side to renew the plant, to repay the borrowed capital
and to provide for contingencies. At this rate in less
than a generation the Corporation, in the name and for
the benefit of the people of Sheffield, will be the possessor,
free of all burdens, of an extensive tramway system and
plant maintained in an efficient condition, which will
have cost the ratepayers nothing and will have conferred
the benefits of cheap commodious travelling upon the
crowded population of that town in the meantime. This
is the concern that the Times correspondent not obscurely
hints ought to be in the hands of the Official Receiver,
because it repays its capital and creates a " Renewal
F u n d " instead of starting a " Depreciation Fund." Is
this not playing with words? W h a t matters what it may
be called? A sinking fund for repayment of borrowed
capital is the equivalent and more than the equivalent of
the sums set aside by most trading concerns for depreciation, and there is not a municipality in the country
that is allowed by the Local Government Board to borrow
money for reproductive undertakings except on the condition t h a t it shall immediately begin to* repay the principal out of earnings.
One may search Mr. Garcke's
Manual in vain for a company that depreciates its plant
at the same time that it repays its borrowed capital* Are
we then to suggest that these companies should be mostly
in the hands of the Official Receiver. Even the Times
correspondent, valiant as he is at attacking municipal
authorities whom it is safe to1 libel, would hesitate to- go
the length of that.
Now let us take the alleged loss on municipal undertakings. Again and again we are told that these undertakings are being run a t " the expense of the ratepayers/'
* While the Municipalities put by 49-80 per cent, of their profits
the Companies only reserve 22*18 per cent, of theirs. The finance of
the former is therefore conducted on much sounder lines.

i8

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

but the only instances produced in support of this reiterated complaint are the electric lighting departments
of a few towns like Bath, Salford, Bristol, Bedford. I n
nearly all these cases the loss is not actual, seeing that
much larger sums than the deficiencies stated are transferred to the sinking fund, and that this fact is perfectly
appreciated by such authorities as Mr. Garcke is seen by
a reference to his Analysis of the accounts of electricity
undertakings published in the Manual for 1901-2. I n
this table each one of the towns specified by the Times,
with the unimportant exceptions of Morley, Monmouth
and Redditch as having made a loss on their electrical
undertakings, are shown to have made a profit; and the
only reason that this profit is not yet large enough to
cover the sinking charges the Corporations are compelled
to make is that in each case the undertakings have been
too short a time in hand to turn the balance on the right
side. Companies as well as municipalities are quite
accustomed to a loss over the first few years, but the
profits subsequently made soon more than recoup them
for these early deficiencies.
The truth is, the Times, in its anxiety to make a case
against the municipalities at any cost, has selected all the
unfavourable instances it could find, and has entirely
ignored the host of other cases in which municipal undertakings have been an unqualified success. Let us sweep
such a garbled presentation of the facts on one side, and
with the help of Mr. Garcke's Manual (certainly not prejudiced in favour of the Corporations) state it in such a
way that the real facts may be presented to the reader in
as clear a form as possible.
There are, then, according to this book, 97 municipal
electrical undertakings in the British Isles Of these
only six have made a loss on the ye&rs' working. Of
the six three record their first year of working, two their

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

19

second, and one its third. The total loss made by the
six municipalities is ,£2,442; the total profit made by
the remaining 91 municipalities is upwards of £621,000.
Of this profit £264,000 is applied to the sinking fund,
and the major portion of the remainder goes in payment
of interest on loans and to special reserve; account®.
Now as to charges. Although these municipal undertakings show such a large profit let it not be supposed
that they are made at the expense of the consumer. The
reverse is the case. The companies' average price per
unit for 1901-2 was 4.94d., and the municipal average
price per unit for the same year 3.82d., or 1.12d. less (see
pp. 10 and 11 of the Manual).
From the facts here presented the reader can judge for
himself as to the state of the case for municipal trading
so far as electric lighting is concerned. H e can, also form
a judgment as to* the methods by which the Times correspondent has compiled his case. The suppression of
facts that tell against one's self, and the enlargement of
those which by a little skilful manipulation can
be made to serve one's own side, are old dodges wellknown to a certain class of shady practitioners at the
Old Bailey. That the Times should fall back upon them
shows at least the nature of the interests it has to defend.
The painstaking collection of anecdote® and tittle-tattle
relating to the personnel of public bodies which constitutes
its last contribution to the subject is surely too contemptible for notice. Suffice it to say that the same misapplied industry with the scissors and a file of newspapers
applied to the directorates of companies would reveal a
far lower standard of probity than that found on public
bodies. Even a " greengrocer" is to be preferred to a
Hooley or Whittaker Wright where the welfare of society
is at stake; and there is this at least to be said for municipalization—the more it extends the more does the field

20

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

of operation for such gentlemen as the last-named contract.
The object of this paper has been achieved if it has
enabled the reader to pierce the mask thrown over the
real nature of the attack on municipalism, and to see the
naked self-interest lurking beneath. I t goes without saying that there are circles where the social problems
raised by such an alteration in the form of industry as
municipalization implies are debated in an academic and
philosophic spirit.
But leaving young men's debating
societies and the theoretical works of Mr. Herbert Spencer
on one side, sufficient proof has been adduced to convince
the practical reader that the present movement springs
from interested quarters and is engineered by persons
who think they personally have more to lose than to gain
by the growth of municipal enterprise. The matter is
simply one of a clash of interests, On the one hand we
have companies desirous to skin the public, and on the
other hand the public through its municipalities objecting
to be skinned.
Springing out of this antagonism of
interests is a corresponding conflict of ideas. I n the
spirit of t h a t old barbarian Von Moltke, who, viewing
London from the top of St. Paul's remarked, " W h a t a
splendid city to sack! " the speculator and his advance
agent, the company promoter, perceiving growing populations and increasing ground rents cry, " W h a t a magnificent opportunity for dividends and profitsi! " Opposed
to this anti-social view we have the growing sense of
citizenship which would use the collective power of the
community to organize on its own behalf the monopolies
its existence creates. Between these two views there can
be no reconciliation. They will oppose each other until
the final triumph of civilization relegates those interests
that wish to grow rich at the expense of the community
to the same niche in the Temple of F a m e as that occupied
at present by highwaymen and pirates.

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

21

The anti-municipalisers of course cry out " Would you
suppress private enterprise ?" Yes, says Society, if by
private enterprise is meant the exploitation of our needs
for private gain.
That sort of private enterprise is
already found out. The slums and rookeries, the poverty
and squalor of our towns axe witnesses against it. We
have lost all trust in private enterprise, and already pay
to support an army of inspectors to see that it doesn't kill
us with pestiferous drains, cheat us with short weights,
poison us with adulterated food, impoverish our children
by watering the milk, burn us in our beds by building
in defiance of the risk of lire, create nuisances that decimate us with plague and pestilence, and in a hundred
and one ways make life impossible unless we can afford
to bribe it by high prices to deal fairly by us. No, we
would as soon abolish police surveillance for ticket-ofleave men as leave private enterprise to follow its own
barbarous instincts.
Finally, it is; getting to be well understood that the
days of competition are numbered. The choice is now
very seldom between a number of firms competing with
each .other to supply public wants, but is between a
monopoly owned and controlled for private gain and one
popularly administered for the public good. Under cover
of Private Enterprise lurks the sinister figure of the Trust.
Take the recent important development that has taken
place in electricity. I n future power can be supplied to
remote places over an area of hundreds of square miles.
So great and many are the changes likely to be brought
about by this wholesale distribution of mechanical power
that they may amount to a revolution greater than that
attendant on the introduction of steam.; and yet we see
a greedy clique struggling to gain the sole right to control
the whole supply. I n an article contributed to the Westminster Gazette on J u n e 12, 1902, Mr. K. Donald points

22

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

out that the British Electric Traction Co. had promoted
or secured the control of over 80 subsidiary concerns.
This Company has seven directors1 all told. Three of
them are titled gentlemen modestly contented with places
on the boards of only four other companies; but the
remaining four are Mr. C. S. Drummond, who is a
director of five other consanguineous concerns, Mr. J . S.
Raworth of 20 others, Mr. C. S. B. Hilton of 14 others,
and Mr. Emile Garcke (managing) of no less than 37
others. This is the group which controls tramways or
light railways in upwards of 80 districts throughout the
country. The same handful of men have promoted most
of the electric power bills that have been submitted to
Parliament. Springing from the same inner circle there
is the Power Distribution Co., Ltd., which was formed
in June, 1898. Its directors are familiar names to any
student of the underground machinery of electrical
finance: Emile Garcke, J. S. Raworth, R. P . Sell on,
C. S. Hilton, and W. L. Madgen. This Company in two
or three years has begotten, or allied itself with, 12 other
power supply companies. Whole counties, so far as the
distribution of power is concerned, are already in the
hands of this growing Trust, which bids fair to gobble up
every electrical undertaking that the municipalities
neglect, or are not allowed, to administer.
The municipal authorities are not all that ardent reformers might desire. Too often they fail to rise to the
true measure of their opportunities, and they do not
always treat their employees in an enlightened spirit.
They are also at a disadvantage in being limited, in such
matters as the supply of electric power or the running of
trams, to their own area*—a restriction which, with many
others, Parliament might well abolish. But at least they1
are above the reach of such scandals as those that attach!
to American towns, where, according to the Hon. Robert

The Anti-Municipal

Conspiracy

Exposed.

23

P . Porter, Director of the Eleventh United States Census,
" no city owns and operates its own tramways and very
few manufacture gas or supply electric light."
From
which fact it appears that the standard of public spirit
and of civic honesty is in inverse ratio to the quantity
of municipal enterprise displayed. I t is therefore certainly in the favour of the municipalities of this country
bhat the work they have done should have aroused such
a campaign of falsehood and calumny as that to which
attention is drawn in these pages.

VAIL &
PRINTERS
170,

(TRADE

Co.,
UNION

FARRINGDON

ROAD,

HOUSE),
E.C.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.
<-#*?

A P P E N D I X T O F I N A L R E P O R T (England and Wales)
O F T H E R O Y A L C O M M I S S I O N ON L O C A L TAXAT I O N . 1902. Eyre & Spottiswoode, 2s. 7d.
T H E A N N U A L LOCAL TAXATION R E T U R N S , YEAR
1899-1900. 1902. Eyre & Spottiswoode, l l j d .
D O E S M U N I C I P A L M A N A G E M E N T PAY ? (Recommended.) (By R. B. SUTHERS.) The Clarion Press, 6d.
MUNICIPAL FINANCE & MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE(Address by Sir H. H. FOWLER.) P. S. King & Son, Is.
T H E COST OF M U N I C I P A L TRADING.
D. H. DAVIES, read before the Society' of Arts.)
and Son, 2s.
T H E MUNICIPAL
Lloyd & Co., Id.

JOURNAL.

(A paper by
P. S. King

Weekly.

Edward

R E P O R T ON R E P A Y M E N T O F L O A N S BY L O C A L
A U T H O R I T I E S . Eyre & Spottiswoode, 3s. 8d. 24th June,
1902.
T H E T I M E S , " August 19th, 23rd, 28th, September 2nd,
5th, 8th. 3d. each.
'/THE M A N U A L O F E L E C T R I C A L U N D E R T A K I N G S ,
A N D D I R E C T O R Y O F O F F I C I A L S , Vol. VI., 1901-2.
(Garcke).
12s. 6d.
T H E EVIDENCE GIVEN BEFORE T H E COMMITTEE
ON M U N I C I P A L T R A D I N G . Eyre & Spottiswoode, 3s.
T H E M U N I C I P A L Y E A R BOOK, 1902. Edward Lloyd & Co.,
Ltd., 3s. 6d.
T H E PROCEEDINGS OF T H E BRITISH ASSOCIATION
—ECONOMIC SCIENCE SECTION.
Times Reports,
Sept. 13th, 1902. 3d,
TO-DAY'S WORK.

GEORGE HAW.

Clarion Press, 2s. 6d.

RETURN
R E L A T I N G TO A U T H O R I S E D
TRICITY SUPPLY UNDERTAKINGS.
Spottiswoode.
(Local Authorities) l^d.
(Companies)
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ELECEyre and