While the plans for municipal wood and coal yards and plumbing shops were doubtless abandoned in Milwaukee by reason of legal limitations, and not merely to please the small traders, as some have contended, no Socialist reason can be given for the practical abandonment years ago of the proposed plan for municipal ownership of street railways. If the charter prohibited such an important measure as this, all efforts should have been concentrated on changing the charter. Socialists do not usually allow their world-wide policy, or even their present demands to be shaped by a city charter. If Mr. Berger had announced earlier and more clearly, and if he had repeated with sufficient frequency, his recent declaration that _Milwaukee is administered by Socialists but does not have a Socialist administration_, he would have avoided a world of misunderstanding. In fact, if he had enunciated this principle with sufficient emphasis before the municipal election of 1910, it is highly probable that the Socialists would not yet have won the city, and would never have felt obligated to claim, as they often do now, that Socialists, who must direct part of their energies towards future results, are more efficient as practical reformers than non-Socialists, who are ready to sacrifice every ultimate principle, if they have any, for immediate achievements. The whole question between reformists and revolutionaries refers not so much to the policy of Socialists in control of municipalities, which is often beyond criticism, as to the value of municipal activity generally for Socialist purposes. None deny that it has value, but reformists and revolutionaries ascribe to it different roles. There are two reasons why Socialism _cannot_ yet be applied on a municipal scale--one economic and one political. I do not refer here, of course, to municipal ownership, often called "municipal Socialism," a typical manifestation of "State Socialism," but to a policy that attempts to make use of the municipality against the capitalist class. Such a policy is economically impossible to-day because it would gradually drive capital to other cities and so indirectly injure the whole population including the non-capitalists. Indeed, Mayor Seidel especially denies that he will allow any "hardship on capital," and City Clerk Thompson gives nearly a newspaper column of statistics to show that "the business of Milwaukee has continued to expand" since the Socialists came into power, remarking that "there have been no serious strikes or labor troubles in Milwaukee for years"--surely a condition which employers will appreciate. Nothing could prove more finally than such statements, how municipal governments at present feel bound to serve the business interests.