fighting local employers they would be fighting the Government."[1]
If Government control is only to mean harder fighting between Labour and its employer, there is a sweet prospect ahead of the Socialistic State.
A similar lesson can be learnt from the experience of municipal enterprise in the report of the conference between the Prime Minister and the miners' leaders on the subject of the nationalization of coal-mines. The Prime Minister was reported as saying:—
"Municipalities in their communal ownership own gigantic industries, but I do not think you can point to a single case where it can be said that workmen working for the commune, either the local commune or the national one, work more heartily, work harder, or increase the output in comparison with their fellows who are working for a syndicate—not one."
Whereupon Mr. Smillie replied, "Yes, the Glasgow trams are. They work more loyally." Mr. W. E. Treir, editor of the Electric Railway and Tramway Journal, wrote a letter that was printed in the Times of October 17, 1919, in which he stated that the above-quoted passage
- ↑ Times, August 15, 1919.
