"Socialists to-day are working in the towns with a twofold object. (1) To level up their districts. If Glasgow has municipal telephones, there is a very good precedent for Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford, Leeds, &c., doing likewise. If Liverpool owns a municipal milk-supply, London, Manchester, Bradford, Leeds, must be brought into line. Each town must adopt the good points from every other town. (2) To urge their districts to launch out into something new."[668] "The property held and worked and controlled by municipalities already exceeds _500,000,000l._ sterling in value, and is being added to yearly. This process has but to continue long enough to ensure that every industry will pass under public control, and thus State Socialism will become an accomplished fact by a gradual process of easy transition."[669]
"The proper sphere of municipal activity includes everything a municipality can do better than a private company."[670] "The immediate object should be to municipalise all those services which are necessary to a healthy life. Food, fuel, clothing, shelter--these are required by all--and no man should have the right to deny them to any worker. We must not stop at municipal trams. We must not stop at municipal gas. We must not stop at municipal electricity. These are only stepping-stones. Not until we can say that poverty and disease and unemployment are abolished out of the land shall we have the right to discuss the limits of municipal trading."[671] "The economic forces which replaced the workshop by the factory will replace the private shop by the municipal store, and the private factory by the municipal one."[672]
According to Socialist teaching the destruction of private enterprise by municipal undertakings will be a blessing to all citizens. "Where a city supplies its own gas there is no 'middle-man.' The corporation stands in the place of the 'middle-man,' and as the corporation is elected by the citizens the people are thus in the position of getting their own gas made and paying for it in their own way. Some of the citizens are makers of gas, or workmen; most of the citizens are users of gas, or consumers; and all of the citizens are owners and managers of the gasworks and of the gas supply."[673]