12 
LAND 6? WATER 
December 5, 1918 
Industry and the State : By John Murray 
IN pre-war days it was a common complaint that the 
State did little for the industry of the country. Active 
concern and support were felt by many to be unduly 
lacking. Nor was this feeling * confined to extreme 
Protectionists. For -many trades are at all times 
relatively unaffected by foreign trade. Many others depend 
on cheap and plentiful imports of every description. Mi.xed 
up with various political motives was much misgiving •about 
the domestic conduct of industry. It was beyond question 
that many branches of production and distribution suffered 
more from their own intrinsic faults and infirmities than 
from any other cause. ["^ 
What these shortcomings were scarcely needs telling'; 
scarcity of capital, ill-trained and ill-supervised labour, 
lack of knowledge of organisation of progressive ideas 
among the directing heads. The remedy for most of 
these is as easy to name as it is difficult to apply. It 
consists, of course, in an exacter fitting of -means to ends 
and a profounder study of the conditions of success. This 
depends, clearly, on the better education of all parties. Mr. 
Chamberlain's protectionist campaign, negatived at the 
election of 1906, bore fruit indirectly in these directions. 
Business men were provoked and driven into discovering 
how to better themselves without recourse to Protection. 
But for Mr. Chamberlain's campaign, less would have been 
done in the succeeding era towards the renovation and the 
modernisation of industry than was in fact accomplished. 
This era was one of self-help. The State might certainly 
have helped, without offending against any party's political 
principles ; and with State help even greater advances than 
occurred might have been made between 1906 and 1914. 
The great advances made by Germany in that period were 
due in great part to well-developed self-help. But in England 
the election of 1906 practically vetoed action by the State 
even in the uncontroversial matters. And, indeed, by 1906 
the nervous mood, which followed the Boer war, and which 
provided an atmosphere for Mr. Chamberlain's campaign, 
was already passing away. The nation was entering on an 
exceptional period of growth and prosperity. 
Individual Obligations 
In this wave of prosperity an opportunity was lost : a 
great one, if you like, or not so great ; but, in any case, an 
opportunity. In the reaction against the Protectionist 
propaganda of 1903 to 1906 the alternative or non-political 
theory of the relations between the State and industry ought 
to have had more prominence. For this alternative, policy 
is no blank negative, no mere veto on State interest or action. 
It is self-help, of course, in the first place. Self-help means 
the use of inventive and methodical intelligence in your own 
business in a spirit of co-operativeness with other men placed 
similarly. 
In proportion as emphasis is laid on invention and 
method, the idea of co-operativeness, generally speaking, 
will make itself felt. But, in the second place, the alternative 
policy should include a certain completion of self-help which 
the State alone can give or can give most effectively. Indus- 
tries differ so widely that it is difficult to indicate in a general 
form what the contribution of the State should be. In 
general, however, it would be true to say that in each industry 
there are conditions to be studied, experiments to be made, 
steps to be taken, which are scarcely within the scope or the 
competence of private interest. This is probably true, at 
present, even of the best-organised industries. Their organisa- 
tion has been devised, as a rule, for the solution of general 
labour questions, less often for the regulation of prices to the 
consumer, and it has been devised only under compulsion — 
by labour on the one side, by competitors on the other. The 
effort and the machinery scarcely anywhere contemplate 
more than relief from the two-fold primordial emergency' 
of the business man. So strong is the individualism of the 
nation. 
Many industries, moreover, have only the bare begin- 
nings of organisation to show, and some not even these. 
Scarcely anywhere is a more positive contribution sought 
from organisation or ^ any of the refinements of self-help. 
Whatever may come to be the practice in the future, it is 
certainly true at present that there is work to be done in 
almost any industry — learning, exploring, experimenting, 
training, suggesting, planning — that calls for a more general 
view and a more disinterested attitude than can be expected 
from any industrialist, or from any group or organ of the 
industrialists. The ordinary man of business has no time 
for such work, nor the versatility. He will tell you, too, 
that he lacks the money ; and so wall his rivals. Yet that 
must, indeed, be a poverty-stricken industry' which cannot 
find money for experimentation towards its own greater 
success as a whole. Here is the crux. 'The industries exist 
as wholes. They have uniform interests and needs, apart 
from any suggestion of consolidation into trusts. But they 
do not readily or easily think of themselves, as wholes. They 
are suspicious of acting as wholes, even towards general 
ends which do not touch individual freedom, except to 
promise it a more substantial success. They shrink from 
undertaking, so to speak, certain* items of their own staff 
work. This work concerns, primarily, the industries them- 
selves. In course of time some of them will shoulder it. 
But even these, and a fortiori certain others, need a starting 
impulse from outside. 
This impulse can only come from the State. No other 
agency has the ear of the country, or the necessary 
power. And the State, if in a secondary sense, is 
genuinely concerned with the industries, for it embodies 
the most general interests of all citizens. Among these 
interests must be reckoned the efficiency of production and 
distribution, which has logically nothing to do with protection 
or with any specific policy or possibility of favouring either 
consumer or producer at the expense of the other. The 
State, therefore, is marked out for a staff r61e, as pioneer or 
as colleague of the industries in tasks of the widest scope. 
State Help 
It was so marked out, by implication, at the election of 
1906, if the nation or its rulers could but have seen it. True, 
Parliament was not prepared at once to renew controversy 
even on a basis which, properly propounded, might have 
united men of all parties. And the civil service lacked the 
specialised staff whose knowledge and experience might have 
made intervention fruitful. Thus neither the motives nor 
the means were there. Yet the idea of such State help as 
has been indicated above is both simple and clear, no matter 
how varied its application in particular industries might 
prove. It is also reasonably workable. It is advantageous, 
whether judged a priori or on the facts of experience, in those 
countries which have tried it. On the other hand, it is neither 
control, nor expropriation, nor socialism, nor taxation. It 
encroaches nowhere on freedom in trade. It prejudices 
neither consumer nor producer. It is not identifiably any 
of the things which inflame partisan feeling, or which confer 
sectional benefits only. You have in it, on the contrary, 
a common aim, a minimum and uncontroversial policy which 
deserved, and deserves, the goodwill of both political parties. 
And both political parties neglected it from 1906 upwards. 
The State had no share in the industrial awakening of Ihat 
period. 
HereT and there the process of mcdernisaticn made 
headway according as individual firms had the initiative or 
the means to undertake it. The results have been significant. 
But they might have been vastly greater. The State, missing 
its opportunity, staved off functions which might well have- 
descended upon it any time after 1906. By its refusal to 
grow, the State renounced a large measure of usefulness. 
Or shall we say postponed, and not renounced ? 
Since 1914 all this is changled. It is hardly necessary to- 
rehearse the steps that have been taken or their directions. 
Little by little the State has laid hold of wellnigh the whole 
economic life of the nation. The vast scale of war needs 
and the reduction of world margins, -whether of labour, food,, 
transport, or materials, have driven a nation that has always 
been jealous of freedom to multiply controls. The farther 
reduction of certain margins may yet intensify certain 
control. 
The "central point of view" is everj'where in evidence, 
and also in power. State control, indeed, has reached a 
zenith. And it is no momentary intrusion into affairs formerly 
thought private that the nation is bearing so loyall^'. In 
these four years control has "found itself." And control 
will not vanish the moment peace is declared. The bureau- 
cracies are now securely in the saddle, or were so on November 
nth. Some are efficient ; and, if they continue, more may 
be. Acceptance of bureaucracy is growing among those 
considerable classes which are ordinarily indifferent to bureau- 
crats or only slightly hostile. In some quarters admiration 
has set in. If through all. this freedom is jeopardised, remem- 
