hority. But opponents can also say, as does the Milwaukee _Journal_,
that "the administration would not dare to carry out its promises to
engage in municipal Socialism if it had the authority." For while
municipal "Socialism" or public ownership is perfectly good capitalism,
it is not always good politics in a community where the small taxpayers
dominate.

While the plans for municipal wood and coal yards and plumbing shops
were doubtless abandoned in Milwaukee by reason of legal limitations,
and not merely to please the small traders, as some have contended, no
Socialist reason can be given for the practical abandonment years ago of
the proposed plan for municipal ownership of street railways. If the
charter prohibited such an important measure as this, all efforts should
have been concentrated on changing the charter. Socialists do not
usually allow their world-wide policy, or even their present demands to
be shaped by a city charter.

If Mr. Berger had announced earlier and more clearly, and if he had
repeated with sufficient frequency, his recent declaration that
_Milwaukee is administered by Socialists but does not have a Socialist
administration_, he would have avoided a world of misunderstanding. In
fact, if he had enunciated this principle with sufficient emphasis
before the municipal election of 1910, it is highly probable that the
Socialists would not yet have won the city, and would never have felt
obligated to claim, as they often do now, that Socialists, who must
direct part of their energies towards future results, are more efficient
as practical reformers than non-Socialists, who are ready to sacrifice
every ultimate principle, if they have any, for immediate achievements.

The whole question between reformists and revolutionaries refers not so
much to the policy of Socialists in control of municipalities, which is
often beyond criticism, as to the value of municipal activity generally
for Socialist purposes. None deny that it has value, but reformists and
revolutionaries ascribe to it different roles.

There are two reasons why Socialism _cannot_ yet be applied on a
municipal scale--one economic and one political. I do not refer here, of
course, to municipal ownership, often called "municipal Socialism," a
typical manifestation of "State Socialism," but to a policy that
attempts to make use of the municipality against the capitalist class.

Such a policy is economically impossible to-day because it w