During the year 1899 not a single corporation has received at the hands of the State of New York one privilege of any kind, sort or description, by law or otherwise, to which it was not entitled, and which was not in the public interest; nor has corporate influence availed against any measure which was in the public interest. At certain times, and in certain places, corporations have undoubtedly exerted a corrupting influence in political life; but in this State for this year it is absolutely true, as shown by the history of every measure that has come before the Legislature from the franchise tax down, that no corporate influence has been able to prevail against the interests of the public. It has become more and more evident of late years that the State will have to act in its collective capacity as regards certain subjects which we have been accustomed to treat as matters affecting the private citizen only, and that furthermore, it must exercise an increasing and more rigorous control over other matters which it is not desirable that it should directly manage. It is neither possible nor desirable to lay down a general hard and fast rule as to what this control should be in all cases. There is no possible reason in pure logic why a city, for instance, should supply its inhabitants with water, and allow private companies to supply them with gas, any more than there is why the general government should take charge of the delivery of letters but not of telegrams. On the other hand, pure logic has a very restricted application to actual social and civic life, and there is no possible reason for changing from one system to the other simply because the change would make our political system in theory more symmetrical. Obviously it is undesirable that the government should do anything that private individuals could do with better results to the community. Everything that tends to deaden individual initiative is to be avoided, and unless in a given case there is some very evident gain which will flow from State or municipal ownership, it should not be adopted. On the other hand, when private ownership entails grave abuses, and where the work is of a kind that can be performed with efficiency by the State or municipality acting in its collective capacity, no theory or tradition should interfere with our making the change. There is grave danger in attempting to establish invariable rules; indeed it may be that each case will have to be determined upon its own merits. In one instance a private corporation may be able to do the work best. In another the State or city may do it best. In yet a third, it may be to the advantage of everybody to give free scope to the power of some individual captain of industry. On one point there must be no step backward. There is a consensus of opinion that New York must own its own water supply. Any legislation permitting private ownership should be annulled.