PUBLIC POLICY. The only points under this head that can be considered here are the appor tionment of the cost of service between the vari ous classes of consumers and one or two phases of the municipal ownership question. Appor tionment of cost of scrcice involves not alone the quantity of water consumed by the various users, but the heavy capital charges incurred to make very large rates of consumption available for the few minutes or at most hours at a time when water is used for the extinguishment of fires. Large reservoirs, pumping plants, and mains are provided for fire protection, and used in the aggregate for a short time only in each year. This makes high capital charges, even though the cost of operation for fire protection is small. The other public uses to which water is put, like street-sprinkling, sewer-fiushing, and the supply of parks and school buildings. may be paid for on the same general basis as water sup plied to private consumers. It is a rare thing under either public or private ownership to find a scientific adjustment of the cost of public and private service between the general taxpayers and private consumers, respectively. lint equity
deniands such an adjustment. The fire, school, street. and other departments should be debited :mod the water department, in the case of mu nieipal ownership, credited with the value of the services rendered to each. The taxpayer should not be called upon to meet bills of private con sumers, nor should the man who uses water for a bath tub and lawn sprinkler have included in his hills for these services the heavy cost of fire protection in the business district. As between different individual consumers in the same class the meter is the best means of apportioning the charges for water. So-called fixture rates arc arbitrary guesses and compel the careful water user to pay for the waste of the careless.