The present is in many respects an opportune moment to enlist recruits under the banner of municipalization. The many recent exposures of criminal conspiracies of corporation managers and promoters who have long masqueraded as business men have fairly whetted the public appetite for municipal experimentation. Moreover, one must be peculiarly slow of heart not to perceive that the air just now is vibrant with keen hopes of restoring to our democracy in city and state something of its original vigor. Among the exponents of this wholesome political reaction are found many who advocate municipal ownership and operation as the surest means of purifying our municipal politics. Whereas the plea for municipalization was formerly based on the ground of protecting the citizen's pocket, it is now urged as the only adequate guarantee of honesty in city politics. I desire merely to point out in passing that this plan of driving private corporations entirely out of city politics by entrusting to the city the direct administration of public service enterprises is a remedy whose logical application reaches far beyond the municipal domain. The possible betrayal of the public interest is not confined to the corrupt grants of franchises by city governments. Not a tariff measure is framed by Congress, not an appropriation bill is passed, not a contract awarded by federal, state, or local governments where the same possibility of evil does not lurk. A consistent extension of this doctrine would charge these branches of the government with an infinity of industrial tasks, to preclude the chance that they may violate their trusts at the instigation of dishonest corporations.