transport and the city stops. It lives off the shelves of stores. The shelves produce nothing. The city cannot feed, clothe, warm, or house itself. City conditions of work and living are so artificial that instincts sometimes rebel against their unnaturalness.
And finally, the overhead expense of living or doing business in the great cities is becoming so large as to be unbearable. It places so great a tax upon life that there is no surplus over to live on. The politicians have found it easy to borrow money and they have borrowed to the limit. Within the last decade the expense of running every city in the country has tremendously increased. A good part of that expense is for interest upon money borrowed; the money has gone either into non-productive brick, stone, and mortar, or into necessities of city life, such as water supplies and sewage systems at far above a reasonable cost. The cost of maintaining these works, the cost of keeping in order great masses of people and traffic is greater than the advantages derived from community life. The modern city has been prodigal, it is to-day bankrupt, and to-morrow it will cease to be.
The provision of a great amount of cheap and convenient power—not all at once, but as it may be used—will do more than anything else to bring about the balancing of life and the cutting of the waste which breeds poverty. There is no single source of power. It may be that generating electricity by a steam plant at the mine mouth will be the most economical method for one community. Hydro-electric power may be best for another community. But certainly in every community there ought to be a central station to furnish cheap power—it ought to be held as essential as a railway or a water supply. And we could have every great source of power harnessed and working for the common good were it not that the expense of obtaining capital stands in the way. I think that we shall have to revise some of our notions about capital.
Capital that a business makes for itself, that is employed to expand the workman's opportunity and increase his comfort and prosperity, and