Monopoly has stunk in English nostrils since the days of Elizabeth, and if Capitalism tries to impose it now, it is committing suicide and asking for State Socialism. It is true that under State Socialism monopoly would be more tyrannous than under private enterprise, because since the Government would itself be the monopolist, the helpless consumer would have no official stick to lay across the back of it. But if there is to be monopoly, it will be easy for Socialists to persuade the public that in the hands of the State the monopoly would create profits, not for a profiteering octopus, but for the general good. Already Mr. Sidney Webb has made the recent bank amalgamations, though they are far from having set up any real approach to monopoly, a text for an adroit and ingenious sermon on the need for State banking, in an article on "How to Prevent Banking Monopoly," in the Contemporary Review of July 1918.
In fact, if the movement in favour of nationalization triumphs and proceeds to its logical conclusion, the end of the system of private Capitalism, it will be an interesting inquiry for the economist of the future to consider, how much was done by private capitalists and the property owning classes to kill a system
