Mar. 31. ne interest of the annual elecity report is largely discounted by the greater interest of Mr. Aldridge's subsequent report in answer to Mr. Edward Ezra and others on the proposed extensions of the next three years. As re-yards the Department's record in 1919, there is nothing to tell but that the uniform success of many years past has been fully maintained. Profits were more than Tls. 54,000 above the estimate and every section gives a good account of itself. Such continued prosperity is certainly the best of inducements to ratepayers to say: Let him roar again And yet there are countervailing circumstances which must not be overlooked, the condition of Municipal finance, our increasing requirements in all directions, the whole question of what we wish Shanghai to become. In a most weighty report published in yesterday's Gazette, Mr. Goodale showed that whereas in 1910 we borrowed Tls. 313,800 and the Electricity Department took less than half of them, we are wanting to borrow, this year, Tls. 4,800,000 of which the Department will take Tls. 2,800,000 towards the six millions it asks for in the next three years.
Mr. Aldridge's explanation of the Department's desired extensions (published by us last Saturday and again in yesterday's Gazette) is admirably clear and detailed. The most important section is that which deals with the estimated consumption of electricity down to the end of 1922. It will be noticed that whereas units sold for power are millions in the present year to 250 uuillions in 1922, those required for lighting, private and public, heating and traction are expected to increase by only five millions altogether. In other words, the Department could probably cope with the demand for light, heat and traction without adding to, or only in a trifling degree, its equipment. It is for power (whether inside or outside the Settlement does not matter at present) that we are asked to borrow and nothing else. That point the ratepayers should keep innly in mind.
It will be remembered that Mr. Ezra proposes that power consumers should be required to take up municipal debentures to tha extent of one-third the capital cost of supplying them if they are inside the Settlement, and two-thirds if outside; and that as old contracts fall in, they should be renewed on the same condition.
The Council has accepted this principle, though modifying it, as regards new consumers; but a moral difficulty appears to be felt in applying it to the old. This scruple would mean a great reduction of the amount of debentures thus taken up. In any case, as Mr. Goodale points ous in the report referred to above, '"'the Department has to lay down plant to cope with anticipated future requirements." We cannot wait io order machinery till they materialize. At the outset, at any rate, the community has to find or promise to find the money, under all the difficulties and disadvantages which last year's borrowing so clearly revealed.
There is a question that many ratepayers must have asked themselves, but which we have never seen answered. We are often told that there can be no finality in the Electricity Department's borrowing, that it must go on extending for ever and ever. We want to know why. The question is not asked in any nasty spirit, in any desire to ''crab'' a most excellent undertaking. We simply want to. know, in view of the difficulty and expense of borrowing, what is likely to happen if the community say, "We will' not borrow merely to supply mills. We have enough machinery for present requirements, and if other millowners ask us for power, we must just say we are sorry but we cannot supply them, at any rate for a few years to come." That attitude has recently been
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.