Another public institution kept by the ratepayers and taxpayers is the prison, with its police force, its courts of law, its judges, and all the rest of its very expensive retinue. An enormous proportion of the offences they deal with are caused by drink. Now the trade in drink is extremely profitable: so much so that in England it is called _The_ Trade, which is short for The Trade of Trades. But why is it profitable? Because the trader in drink takes all the money the drunkard pays for his liquor, and when he is drunk throws him into the street, leaving the ratepayer to pay for all the mischief he may do, all the crimes he may commit, all the illness he may bring on himself and his family, and all the poverty to which he may be reduced. If the cost of these were charged against the drink trade instead of against the police rates and poor rates, the profits of the trade would vanish at once. As it is, the trader gets all the takings; and the ratepayer stands all the losses. That is why they made the trade unlawful in America. They shut up the saloons (public houses), and found immediately that they could shut up a good many of the prisons as well. But if they had municipalized the drink traffic: that is, if the ratepayer had kept the public house as well as the prison, the greatest care would have been taken to discourage drunkenness, because drunkenness would have produced a loss in the municipal accounts instead of a profit. As it is, the ratepayer is being exploited outrageously by the drink trade, and the whole nation weakened and demoralized in order that a handful of people may become unnaturally rich. It is true that they rebuild our tumble-down cathedrals for us occasionally; but then they expect to be made peers for it. The bargain is an insanely bad one anyhow. There is one more trick that can be played on you both by the municipality and the Government. In spite of their obligation not to profiteer, but to give you every service at cost price, they often do profiteer quite openly, and actually boast of their profits as a proof of their business efficiency. This takes place when you pay for the service, not by a tax or a rate, but by the ordinary process of paying for what you consume. Thus when you want a letter sent, you pay the Government three halfpence across the counter for the job. When you live where electric light is made and supplied by the municipality, you do not pay for it in your rates: you pay so much for every unit you consume.