In some cases these public works exist side by side in competition with private enterprise; as, for example, in the carriage of parcels, life insurance, banking, and the various minor branches of post-office work, in medical attendance, and the maintenance of national education, and of places of amusement and recreation. In other cases it claims an absolute monopoly, and shuts off entirely private enterprise, as in the conveyance of letters and telegrams, and the local industries connected with the production and distribution of gas and water. The extent and complexity of that portion of our State and municipal machinery which is engaged in productive work will be understood from the following description-- "Besides our international relations, and the army, navy, police, and the courts of justice, the community now carries on for itself, in some part or another of these islands, the post-office, telegraphs, carriage of small commodities, coinage, surveys the regulation of the currency and note issue, the provision of weights and measures, the making, sweeping, lighting, and repairing of streets, roads, and bridges, life insurance, the grant of annuities, shipbuilding, stockbroking, banking, farming, and money-lending. It provides for many of us from birth to burial--midwifery, nursery, education, board and lodging, vaccination, medical attendance, medicine, public worship, amusements, and interment. It furnishes and maintains its own museums, parks, art galleries, libraries, concert-halls, roads, bridges, markets, slaughterhouses, fire-engines, lighthouses, pilots, ferries, surf-boats, steam-tugs, life-boats, cemeteries, public baths, washhouses, pounds, harbours, piers, wharves, hospitals, dispensaries, gas-works, water-works, tramways, telegraph-cables, allotments, cow-meadows, artisans' dwellings, schools, churches, and reading-rooms. It carries on and publishes its own researches in geology, meteorology, statistics, zoology, geography, and even theology. In our colonies the English Government further allows and encourages the communities to provide for themselves railways, canals, pawnbroking, theatres, forestry, cinchona farms, irrigation, leper villages, casinos, bathing establishments, and immigration, and to deal in ballast, guano, quinine, opium, salt, and what not. Every one of these functions, with those of the army, navy, police, and courts of justice, were at one time left to private enterprise, and were a source of legitimate individual investment of capital."[37] Some of the utilities and conveniences thus supplied by public capital and public labour are old-established wants, but many are new wants, and the marked tendency of public bodies to undertake the provision of the new necessaries and conveniences which grow up with civilization is a phenomenon which deserves close attention.