The Nationalization of the Mines.

Extract

The Nationalization of the Mines.

Amid the complexity of the dispute between the mine-owners and the miners it is well to remember that the miners are making nothing more than a simple demand for sufficiency and security. We are told that there is a world glut of coal, that more coal is being produced than the demand justifies, and that there are more men in the mines than the mines can support. Hence the deadlock: the mines, it is said, cannot give the sufficiency and security that the miners demand.

The nationalization of the mines, that is to say, making them the property of the State to be administered by State officials, is being put forward as a possible remedy, and it will no doubt be one of the chief issues at the next General Election. The most enthusiastic advocates of diffused ownership and private property for all and the stoutest opponents of a Collectivist State will not deny the right of the State to own some national property. The State must possess the means of defence—all the property implied in its duty of maintaining order within its borders and securing itself from agression from without. No one but an anarchist would dispute this.

But there are other kinds of property which are best owned by the State. The Postal services, the supply of water, gas and electricity, and the tramways, are perhaps best administered in public rather than private hands. The highways, the waterways, territorial seawaters and certain forest lands are best in the hands of the State in order to check monopoly and the undue advantage that private persons might have if they possessed them.