se
it was the quickest and surest way of making people sick of
it. Otherwise he thought that education of the public out of
its favor for high costs and low profits by public utilities
would require a generation, and the present emergency calls
for prompt relief.

New York City has just resolved to build with its own funds a
Coney Island bathhouse, and has on file an offer to build it
with private money at a cost of $300,000, with a guarantee of
15-cent baths. Accepting no responsibility for the merits of
the private bidder's proposal, it does not appear likely that
the city can supply cheaper baths or give more satisfaction
to bathers than a management whose profits were related to
its efforts to please patrons. On the other hand, it is sure
that the city's financial embarrassment is due to supplying
many privileges at the cost of the taxpayers, which might
have been supplied both more cheaply and better by private
enterprise with profit than by the city without profit, and
with the use of ill-spared public funds.

New York does not stand alone in these misadventures, which
are warnings against trading by either local or national
government. Take, for example, the manner in which the army
is disposing of its surplus blankets, as reported from
Boston. A Chicago firm which wished to bid was permitted to
inspect three samples of varying grades, but a guarantee that
the goods sold would correspond to the samples was refused.
The bales could neither be opened nor allowed to be opened,
nor would information be given whether the blankets in the
bales were cotton, wool, or mixed, whether single or double,
whether bed blankets or regulation army blankets. The
likelihood that the Government will get the worth of its
blankets is small. There may be unknown reasons for such
uncommercial procedure, but what shall be said of the fact
that at the same time that these blankets are being sold the
Interior Department is asking for bids to supply 10,000
blankets for the Indians? The reason for buying more when
there is an embarrassing over-supply is that the
specifications call for the words "Interior Department" to be
woven into the blankets. To an outsider it would seem that
the words might be indelibly stamped on the old blankets of
similar description, and that the depart