Selections for Briefing.  Before the student makes many briefs of his own he should work in the other direction by outlining material already in existence so that he can be assured he knows main topics from minor ones, important issues from subordinate reasons, headings from examples.  If all the members of the class outline the same material the resulting discussion will provide additional exercise in speaking in explanation or support of an interpretation.  After the teacher and class together have made one, the students should work independently.

EXERCISES

Besides the extracts quoted here others should be supplied.  Editorials from a single issue of a newspaper can easily be secured by the entire class for this work.  A chapter from a book may be assigned.

1.  INCIDENTS OF GOVERNMENT TRADING

An expert before the President’s street railway commission of inquiry testified that he disapproved of public ownership and operation theoretically, but approved it practically, because it was the quickest and surest way of making people sick of it.  Otherwise he thought that education of the public out of its favor for high costs and low profits by public utilities would require a generation, and the present emergency calls for prompt relief.

New York City has just resolved to build with its own funds a Coney Island bathhouse, and has on file an offer to build it with private money at a cost of $300,000, with a guarantee of 15-cent baths.  Accepting no responsibility for the merits of the private bidder’s proposal, it does not appear likely that the city can supply cheaper baths or give more satisfaction to bathers than a management whose profits were related to its efforts to please patrons.  On the other hand, it is sure that the city’s financial embarrassment is due to supplying many privileges at the cost of the taxpayers, which might have been supplied both more cheaply and better by private enterprise with profit than by the city without profit, and with the use of ill-spared public funds.

New York does not stand alone in these misadventures, which are warnings against trading by either local or national government.  Take, for example, the manner in which the army is disposing of its surplus blankets, as reported from Boston.  A Chicago firm which wished to bid was permitted to inspect three samples of varying grades, but a guarantee that the goods sold would correspond to the samples was refused.  The bales could neither be opened nor allowed to be opened, nor would information be given whether the blankets in the bales were cotton, wool, or mixed, whether single or double, whether bed blankets or regulation army blankets.  The likelihood that the Government will get the worth of its blankets is small.  There may be unknown reasons for such uncommercial procedure, but what shall be said of the fact that