292564228

3 4

MR. A. W. FLUX, M.A., ON CITT GOVERNMENT AND

fares will pay. The number of passengers is not given pre- cisely. In view of the faet that, with former fares, the numbers at the smallest rate were so great that the average fare was only approximately that now fixed as the maximum and usual fare, the present average fare may probably be estimated at not more than a penny. If that be so, the half-year's income from January to June would indicate nearly 20 millions of passengers. This I think a minimum estimate. Cleansing .-—Under this head we may consider the cleansing of the streets and the removal of house refuse and also sewage. In respect to the latter, the inelination to trust to private enterprise, which one would not expect from a municipality which took water and gas into its hånds at the start, is some- what remarkable. The pail-system is almost universal in Copenhagen. The removal and cleansing of the pails is under- taken by private agency, there being not even a monopoly till recently. I have examined a considerable series of the accounts of the largest of the companies formerly performing this service, and inquired carefully into various matters bearing on the cost and efficiency of the service. The result at which I arrive is that the removal of the night-soil cost the owners of house property on an average lOd. per head, which was inereased a year or two ago to ls. per head of the population, not to trouble about decimal fractions of pence. This summer a revised Schedule of rates issued by the now monopolist agency showed large inereases, and provoked mueh dissatisfaction. It is, perhaps, worth noting, that the evils of the pail system are controlled, though at the cost of some inconvenience to the inhabitants, as a result of the arrangements associated with the massing of the people in tenement-dwellings, somewhat more effeetively than our system of hosts of small and independent houses permits. The provision for the disposal of waste water has been gradually undergoing complete revision. New outfall and pump- ing arrangements, and a new scheme for a complete and effeetive drainage-system have been taken in hånd, and have made con-