Public Utilities
REGULATION the pubthe protection of the public interest. It OF, in which the government, national, was, at one time, a generally accepted state or municipal, on behalf of the lic, asserts its right to interfere in the management of certain corporations for however, are more and more regulating theory that the right of private individprivate business in the social interest. blic utilities is no longer uals and corporations to manage their own business was sacred. Governments, questioned, even by the most conserva- The right of the government to regulate controlled, ha the control of public tive. Public utilities are those enterprises which, though privately owned and que have as their object the rendering of service to the general public, chief of which are railways, lighting plants, telephone and telegraph lines, water supply, etc. Foremost among these are such enterprises as street railways, waterworks, gas companies, etc., which exercise what is practically a monopoly in their own domain. Obviously, in granting such rights of monopoly, the public must reserve the right of regulation.
Regulation was at first attempted through legislation, but this method proved not only too slow, but inadaptable to special conditions which might arise. Regulation is, therefore, almost always carried on by commissioners, or commissions, which exercise the right of interference as the conditions may arise.
The first official body of this sort created PUBLIUS SYRUS in the United States was the Gas and Electric Light Commission, of Massachusetts, in 1885. Then came the Federal Interstate Commerce Commission, appointed in 1887, with the power to enforce the laws passed by Congress regulating trade between the various States. This body has gradually been given more and more jurisdiction, with the growing sentiment in favor of regulation. Having found her gas and electric light commission a success, Massachusetts later created a Railroad Commission, a Highways Commission, to regulate telephone and telegraph companies, and granted to the State Board of Health the authority to regulate the water supply companies. In 1907 Governor La Follette, in Wisconsin, was authorized by the legislature to appoint a railroad and a public service commission, and Governor Hughes, in the same year, appointed two public service commissions in New York. One of the New York commissions regulated all the public utilities in the city of New York, while the other's jurisdiction covered the rest of the State.
In 1919 the commission for the city was abolished, and two created in its place; one to regulate public utilities in general, the other to regulate only rapid transit corporations, this latter commission being paid by the city, the former by the State. The work of these public service commissions, especially in the case of street railways, has become very difficult during the past few years, on account of the rising cost of labor and materials. On the one hand justice demands that fare increases be allowed, but on the other hand commissioners granting such rises are compelled to face the disapproval of the public.
PUBLIUS (more correctly PUBLILI- US) SYRUS, a Latin writer, so called because a native of Syria, was carried as a slave to Rome about the middle of the 1st century B. c. His master gave him a good education, and afterward set him free. He excelled in writing mimi, or farces, which were interspersed with moral sentences, and a collection of them was used by the Romans as a school book.