384 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
refuse to answer the inquiries of private individuals who were seeking to test their efficiency as compared with municipal plants. While the facts touching municipal plants are usually published, they are not presented in a lucid fashion or with the explanations needed for their proper interpretation. Neither are the facts for different cities given according to any uniform method. An investigator in this field can hardly escape blun- ders in the chaos of municipal finances, and the suspicion is some- times aroused that the figures are made deceptive with intent to mislead the public. At the best their being open to question is as fatal as their being intentionally misleading. Therefore there is little hope for a trustworthy answer to the question under dis- cussion until both private and public corporations are compelled to keep their books by a uniform prescribed method and to publish the important facts annually. Such a law would be hard to pass and harder to enforce, but without it all methods must be tentative and imperfect. It may be in place here to mention that at a convention of the officials of the Bureaus of Statistics of Labor held at Albany last June it was unanimously voted to undertake a cooperative investigation of the municipal owner- ship of water, gas, and electric-light plants and a committee of experienced statisticians was appointed to prepare a uniform schedule or schedules of questions. It will be of interest to see how far these officials succeed in securing the desired informa- tion in form admitting the institution of comparisons and the induction of inferences.
Again the student of any particular form of municipal enterprise must be or become familiar with its technical proc- esses. Like a lawyer he must get up his case carefully and thoroughly, if his analysis and criticism are to be of value. Much popular discussion of municipal enterprises for profit has been valueless or inconclusive, because of failure to conform to this elementary requirement. As no one can become an expert in all these fields, the need of competent advice upon all techni- cal processes and accounts is obvious.
The arguments upon the profitableness of municipal owner-
