The Appropriate Types of Authority
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1926.tb02266.x |
| Published date | 01 October 1926 |
| Author | C. Delisle Burns |
| Date | 01 October 1926 |
The
Appropriate
Types
of
Authority
for
the Operation
of
Publicly
Powers which they should
Utility Services
Owned Utility Services, and the
have
:-The
Consumer
and
Public
By
C.
DELISLB BURNS,
M.A.,
D.Lit.
HE
relation of the consumer or user to the Public Autliority
T
providing public utility services gives rise to various problems.
There is the problem of
all
services-the efficiency
of
the service. From
the point of view
of
the consumer does he obtain from Public Authorities
good water, gas, transport, electricity, and at the best rate of payment
?
Is
one class
of
consumer sacrificed to another? Does the consumer
in control treat his servants well
?
Does he sacrifice the future to present
satisfactions
?
All these questions are clearly different ways of asking
whether public utility services are
as
good as they should be. Now the
best way of supplying such service must clearly be discovered partly by
the members of the Authority, Commission Council or Government, and
partly by the agent of such bodies-the officials. These two groups of
persons, therefore, consider the interests of the consumers and users
in regard to the kind
of
service to be rendered and the ways
of
rendering
it. But the consumers
or
users have their part to play
:
they do not play
it only by electing or controlling the Authority. They can act directly.
It
is this aspect of the relation between the consumer and the Public
Authority which is to be considered here.
The general reason of the establishment of industrial services by
public authorities has been the interest
of
the consumer or user. It
has been thought that these services would tend to be organized mainly
in the interest
of
the servants or
"
producers
"
if they were left to what
used to be called private enterprise, the producers in this sense being, of
course, the controllers of production who are generally the owners of
the capital used in the enterprise. Thus the extension
of
State and
municipal enterprises in industrial services was and is generally for the
defence of the consumer or user of these services.
But the consumer or user, having formed a defence organization for
himself, seems to have gone to sleep behind it. His function has been
conceived to be passive-if being passive is a function. Municipal gas
and
trams are
his
services, and
so
long as they are
his
he does not seem to
care whether they are really services, or at least the consumer seems to
think that he has done all he can when he has voted for a candidate at
the Council elections. This passivity of the consumer is the cause of
318
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