The question of what, if any, compensation should be paid when the state interferes with vested rights cannot be decided by any general rule. The demand for compensation by the Hammersmith gardeners was absurd; but that of the rag pickers was justified; that of poor tenement-house owners on the East Side seems also to be justified; but if the state in taking over these unwholesome tenements were to find one in the hands of a speculator, would compensation be to the same degree justified?
So these questions seem to become questions of detail; they cannot be disposed of by a general rule: "there shall be compensation" or "there shall not be compensation." Above all things, these so-called general rules must not be erected into dogmas or "principles" under the standard of which Socialists are to group themselves and fight one another.
It is interesting to consider in connection with this subject the geographical character of the objections to Socialism as illustrated by the attitude taken by England and America respectively on the subject of municipal ownership.
In England, municipal ownership of gas is the rule rather than the exception. Indeed Manchester has owned its own gas plant from 1843, and has furnished the public with gas at 60 cents per thousand cubic feet, and even at that price[8] made a net profit in 1907-8 of £57,609, which has been applied to the diminution of rates and extension of the service. Birmingham, which had to pay an extravagant price for its gas plant, nevertheless immediately reduced the price of gas and brought it down from $1.10 under private ownership to 50 cents to-day. In England, therefore, it is perfectly respectable to approve of municipal ownership of gas. But inasmuch as water has been until very lately furnished to London in great part by a private company chartered by James I. the stock of which has increased in value a thousand per cent and which counts among its stockholders royalty itself, anybody until very lately who proposed municipal ownership of water in London, was regarded as a dangerous anarchist.
The New York situation is just the reverse. For New York, after having tried private ownership of water and abandoned it as early as 1850 on account of the corruption that resulted therefrom, undertook public ownership of water with such success that no disinterested citizen to-day wants to go back to the old plan. So a New Yorker can advocate municipal ownership of water and still be regarded as a perfectly respectable citizen; but should he venture to favor municipal ownership of gas he is at once classed with those whose heads are only fit to be beaten with a club.