Sec. 3. #Economic influences favoring public ownership#.  In some cases private ownership is difficult because of the excessive cost of collecting for the service.  The cost of maintaining toll houses on a turnpike sometimes exceeds the amount collected.  Collection in other cases, as for the service of lighthouses to passing ships, is impossible.  Public industry may secure, through the economy of large production, a cheaper and more efficient service, the benefits and costs being diffused throughout the community.  The benefits of the work of experiment-stations for agriculture are felt immediately by the farmers, but are diffused to all citizens.  A manufacturer able to keep his method secret, or to retain his advantages for a time, can afford to undertake experiments in his factory, but the farmer seldom can.  The public ownership of parks for the use of all gives a maximum of economy in the production of the most essential goods,—­fresh air, sunshine, natural beauty, and playgrounds in the midst of crowded populations.  Municipal ownership of waterworks is an extension of the same idea.  Not only because large amounts of water are used by the public, but because cheap, pure, abundant water is an essential condition to good citizenship, speculation should in every possible way be eliminated from this industry.

The assumption is made in the laissez-faire doctrine that the interest of the public harmonizes with that of the individual.  But this proves often not to be the case.  For example, the forest has an immediate value to its owners and to the consumers of lumber, and it has also a diffused utility in its influence on industry, on climate, on navigation, on water-power and on floods.  Yet, as the private owner, unless a great land monopolist, does not control enough of the forest to appreciably affect any of these things, and could rarely sell them even if he could affect them, he will cut down the tree whenever he can gain by doing so.  In this situation either governmental control or governmental ownership of forests is essential.

Each kind of political unit, or subdivision of government, develops characteristic kinds of public ownership and industry.  Federal states consist of three main groups of political units:  national, provincial, and local.  Provincial units are the largest subdivisions, as the American “states,” or commonwealths, the German states, and the provinces in other countries.  The term local political unit is more complex and may mean county, township, village, city, or school or sanitary district; but most of what is to be said of local ownership refers to cities or to incorporated villages.