Ellen Glasgow Quotes
The government's like a mule, it's slow and it's sure; it's slow to turn, and it's sure to turn the way you don't want it.
Glasgow, Ellen. The Voice of the People. Doubleday, Page & Co., 1900, p. 306.
the legal and regulatory system While this is generally true, the same very efficient private organziations sometimes act very efficiently against the interest of the public, or a part of the public in a discriminatory manner. There are other functions which for one reason or another no private organization chooses to take on, and we are left with government doing the best it can. And there are some areas where th cost of private service is just too high, and government assumes it for reasons of affordability. However sometimes there is a major problem created by competitive private organzaitions in such heated competition that the servie is terrible. In early America, Fire Fighting was assumed by private organzations, who would often fight with one another over who would handle the fire while entire neighborhoods burned down. The result was public fire service which is now the norm despite the fact that there might be better ervice in with a private company. America has attemted to balance this problem and tends to have done so better than most countries athough the issue is in contant debate in American politics.
Most Americans believe that the discovery of the inferiority of government operations compared to the businesses world was made in the latter part of the 20th century. But here is a famous Englishman in 1891 telling the world in his publication.
Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow was an American novelist who won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1942. A lifelong Virginian who published 20 books including seven novels which sold well (five reaching best-seller lists) as well as gained critical acclaim, Glasgow portrayed the changing world of the contemporary South, differing from the idealistic escapism that characterized Southern literature after Reconstruction.
