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Taranaki Daily News, 8 January 1921, Page 12

Harold Cox, brilliant journalist and editor of the Edinburgh Review, deals with some of the problems of democracy in “Economic Liberty,” a volume he has just published. Mr. Cox, with many other thinkers, sees democracy “moving rapidly in the direction of tyranny.” In a brilliant chapter on Nationalisation he contrasts the advantages of private enterprise with the record of State control, and shows that, judged by practical experience; Nationalisation has proved a complete economic failure. His examples are the Post, Office, which has now become a commercial failure; the railways, with their heavy deficit, and the coal mines—coal costs more, and there is less oL it. “As fast as State enterprise is extended, the possibilities of obtaining revenue by taxing private enterprise are diminished,” and “unless it can be shown that State management, is mpre efficient than private management, the extension of State enterprise must mean the lowering qf wages, even in those industries now under State control ” He urges that “the critics of the capitalist would do wisely to re fleet that the only alternative to the freedom and elasticity of eni'‘rprisos financed with private money is the monotonous tyranny of the bureaucratic State.”