The municipalization of local public utilities has been advocated by many persons who are not socialists, except in so far as they desire an extension of governmental activity along these lines. They urge this because the utilities in question--gas, water, electricity, telephone, street railways, etc.--are by their very nature monopolies, and because under private control they are often inefficiently or dishonestly managed. A less drastic remedy for these abuses might of course be found in regulation. Unrestricted private control of municipal monopolies is advocated by few; the real issue is between public regulation and public management. And this issue will depend in the last analysis upon the question which can give the best results to society.
At the conclusion of a study of this character we are inevitably led to summarize our conclusions and to try to answer the question as to what the lessons of the past have taught us. In what direction are the forces of economic life taking us? The conclusion of this text is that they are making for economic progress, and it will be worth while to justify as far as possible this belief. It is, however, impossible 173 to do this except in very general terms, for definite data for measuring this improvement do not exist, and economic progress itself is a somewhat vague conception. Even such comparatively simple facts as the rate of wages or the hours of labor can be stated only very generally. But both of these show a decided improvement in the condition of the working class. A careful investigation for Great Britain by Mr. A. L. Bowley[50] shows that if wages for the decade 1890-1900 be represented as 100 then the course of wages during the nineteenth century would have run somewhat as follows:
=========+================++===========+=============== Decade | Relative Wages || Decade | Relative Wages ---------+----------------++-----------+--------------- 1800-10 | 55-65 || 1850-60 | 65 1810-20 | 65-70 || 1860-70 | 75 1820-30 | 65 || 1870-80 | 95 1830-40 | 60 || 1880-90 | 90 1840-50 | 60 || 1890-1900 | 100 ---------+----------------++-----------+---------------
Without investigating the validity of the figures too closely, it may safely be affirmed that the movement of wages has been distinctly upward, and that the rise was certainly not less than 50 per cent. For the United States the increase has not been so great, probably because wages started at a higher level. According to the Aldrich report, if wages and prices in 1860 in the United States be taken as 100, relative wages in 1840 were 82.5 and relative prices 98.5; in 1880, they were respectively 143 and 103.4; in 1903, they were 187 and 103. That is to say, relative wages showed a marked advance and real wages, owing to the fact that general prices remained almost stationary, an even greater improvement. So, too, the hours of labor appear to have been shortened in Great Britain about two hours a day (from 10 to 14 hours to 8 to 12), and in the United States probably as much, the average length of the working day in certain employments decreasing 174 from 10.3 hours in 1880 to 9.6 hours in 1903.