It takes a bold administration in the face of all this to come out with accounts that represent faithfully what expense the government has incurred. Practically no such administration has appeared in any city. It would be hardly fair to say that the failure is due always to lack of courage: it may be quite as often due to indifference or to ignorance of the real situation. When, a few years ago, people began to agitate the question of public as compared with private gas works, water works, telephone service, etc., they came to see that statistics are essential; and then they came to see that the figures of municipal cost accounts are nearly worthless.

What effect has the common practice upon the value of municipal statistics? Let us take a few examples. We may desire to learn what is the cost of conducting the public library and to compare it with some figures for other cities. Perhaps the city owns its own lighting plant and charges nothing to the library for lights. Perhaps the city owns its own water supply and furnishes to the library water to run a motor for its book elevators. Perhaps on duty at the library are policemen, who serve as watchmen night and day, and their wages are paid not from library funds, but from police funds. If the library in the other city with which we are to compare this one has to pay high lighting charges, water charges, and watchmen's wages, a comparison of costs between the two is to great extent worthless. It would be impossible usually to learn whether in the other city these costs are met from library funds or from funds of other departments. Obviously, the trouble does not stop here. Suppose we wish to compare lighting costs for this city with lighting costs in another where the library charges are paid independently. Our comparison is thrown out of balance. The difference will be slight for one building, but if the same careless accounting prevails throughout the city departments, in the City Hall, fire stations, police stations, etc., the difference may be more than the whole difference in cost between private management and public management. Similarly, the comparative cost of water and of police service in the two cities is by so much thrown out.

The chances of misrepresentation in city affairs are far more numerous and important than at first sight appear. If the water department is careless, it may not charge the fire department for the great consumption of water at fires, and both water cost and fire-

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