The Valuation of Public Service Corporation Property: Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers,; vol. LXXII, June, 1911, ASCE 1190Riggs, Henry Earle
General
The Valuation of Public Service Corporation Property: Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers,; vol. LXXII, June, 1911, ASCE 1190
This division is convenient but arbitrary. It is the division of an
engineer rather than of an economist; for these so-called non-physical
values are like the breath of a man's life; without them, the physical
value is like the discarded body. Again, the use of negative
non-physical values, while convenient, may not be wholly logical. These
remarks are not directed at Mr. Riggs, for he is careful to say that he
is dealing only with active enterprises, and not with those which are
inert, and the speaker realizes that he is not attempting primarily to
build up a logical argument, but to formulate certain rules to overcome
practical difficulties met by all who have attempted valuation work. As
many who have not given this matter much thought are apt to be misled by
the distinction made between physical and non-physical values, they
should bear in mind that the line between them is like the equator, an
imaginary one.
_Water._—"The water is as much a part of the cost of putting that line
there as the rails," remarked a corporation official, of admirable
character and wide experience, pointing to a trolley line from the
window of a Pullman car; and, bearing in mind what he meant by "water,"
this is undoubtedly so. The cost of promoting the enterprise, the
discount on the hazard, the loss of interest during its infancy, the
labor of building up the undertaking—these are all real elements of
cost, and may remain in the property as value, but, like all other items
of cost, they have their reasonable limits, which, in each individual
case, can be determined within narrow bounds.
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