Government Ownership in Production and Distribution: Being an Account of 337 Now Existing ...

Front matter

Google to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

Preface

As this is, so far as the writer knows, the first investigation of the kind, it would be unreasonable to hope it to be free from mistakes, or that it should tell the whole story. It will be found to fall far, very far, below a full statement of an enumeration of the now actually socialized institutions and enterprises of the various leading governments of the world.

Rut that a book is needed, such as the writer has tried to furnish, all reformers must agree who have come in contact with the surprising stupidity and ignorance displayed by many concern- \\v^ the magnitude of existing concrete socialism.

An English aristocract and high official of the British consular staff, in this country, whom I visited in the hope of securing data for the chapter on Great Britain in this book, in answer to my request for information concerning socialized businesses in his country, answered : " Be assured, my dear sir, that we have none of those things in H'ingland ; we there believe in h'indiwdualized h'enterprise. H 'individualism is the basis of our h'institutions."

While this representative of the British government was thus assuring me that in "H'ingland" all business was conducted by "H'individuals," I had in my pocket a list of two hundred and sixty-nine enterprises, that in his country are owned and operated by the government, and the list was still incomplete.

Mr. Sidney Webb in his Socialism in England (p. 65) says : '*The 'practical man,* oblivious or contemptuous of any theory of the Social Organism or general principles of social organization, has been forced by the necessities of time, into an ever deepening collectivist channel. Socialism, of course, he rejects and despises. The Individualist City Councillor will walk along the municipal pavement, lit by municipal gas and cleaned by municipal brooms, with municipal water, and seeing by the municipal clock in the municipal market, that he is too early to meet his children coming from the municipal school hard by the county lunatic asylum and municipal hospital, will use the national telegraph system to tell them not to walk through the municipal park, but to come by the municipal tramway, to meet him in the municipal reading room, by the municipal art gallery, museum and library, where he intends to consult some of the national publications, in order to prepare his next speech in the municipal townhall, in favor of the nationalization of canals and the increase of the government control over the railway system. * Socialism, sir,' he will say, * don't waste the time of a practical man by your fantastic absurdities. Self-help, sir, individual self-help, that's what's made our city what it is.' " (! ! !)