State Enterprise.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16268, 19 July 1918, Page 6

State Enterprise.

Although the experience of a fairly largo measure of State management of industries and businesses in Great Britain has not been happy, and successive reports of the Select Committee havo disclosed an astonishing amount of waste and incompetence in the spending of the public's money, a good many people still cling to the hope that after tho war State enterprise—ownership and management, and not merely control —will become permanent over a wide area of business and industry. These people wero doubtless encouraged in their hopes by a statement which Mr Lloyd George made a few weeks ago to a Labour deputation. He recalled that tho last thing ho did at the Board' of Trade wad to summon a meeting of railway managers and railway societies to consider a great railways nationalisa<tion scheme. State railways, ho said, would moan better conditions for everybody,- and more economical and efficient working; and he added that he was perfectly certain that there could not bo a reversion to tho old system. On questions of this kind, however, tho Prime Minister is not always a safe man to fellow. Mr Asquith is far safer, ,and in his speech at Derby on March 22nd last he declared that his distrust of State ownership has been strengthened :—

"While I am far from assuming to prejudice such a question, for instance, Us whether it would or would not be desirable to nationalise our railways, i am bound to say, and I think every business man in the country would agree, whether' employed or employers, that our experience of State-controlled industry has not been encouraging. We are living at the present moment under the domination of a whole cohort or controllers, and I am bound to say that the experience of the past year does not lead me to bo sanguine. • Ihese things may be necessary, and, to some oxtent they %re necessary in time ot war. but to think that yon can carry on your industry and maintain your industrial supremacy in time of peace in face of the competition of the civilised world, under a system of State supervision nnd control, is the idlest, I emptiest, and most futile of ideas. It is a noteworthy fact, admitted by Sir Arthur Stanley, on May 15th last, that "no other industry in the country "has caused less troublo and less « anxiety than the cotton industry of " Lancashire"; and the cotton trade happens to be conspicuous amongst the larger industries as one which has not been subject to Government control, having - worked out its salvation by arrangements between employers and employed. Not less remarkable is the result of the State control of the railways, which encourages Mr Lloyd George in his advocacy of State ownership, but which produces a very different effect upon others as liberal-minded and progressive as he is. The Government took control of the railways early in the war, and thus had the fullest opportunity to make the running of them a success. Nevertheless, although more passengers have been carried, athigher fares, while the goods traffic has been heavier, and although the proprietors were paid a little less than they earned in 1913, the working has been carried on at a loss to the State. " Financial results such as these occasion .grave misgivings," as the comment of so soundly Liberal a journal as tha ""Westminster Gazette." "They " account in large measure for that dis- " liko and suspicion of the Government " control ol industry which is found " among practical men, workers and " capitalists alike, wherever that con"trol is exercised. Certainly it is nil- " fortunate that in a unique field for " the exhibition of the benefits of na- " tional ownership arid direction so poor " and disturbing a result should have "been achieved." If State management of business' cannot produce satisfactory results in the conditions most favourable to success—namely, the entire absence of hostility to the State's ' powers, and the existence of the strongest of motives for the putting forth of his beet by everyone concerned —it can hardly bo expected that when normal conditions return State control or ownership of irdustry can be anything but disadvantageous to the country.