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Excerpt from The State in Business: Or the Collectivist State in the Making HE battle that is being waged against Nationaliza T tion is extraordinary, both in volume and intensity. The public ownership of services and undertakings has always been opposed by those whose pockets would thereby be affected, and, as a matter of course, also by the Press and all other organs of opinion controlled or inuenced by the same interests, but it was not until the appearance of the reports of the Coal Commission early in 1919 that the big coal-owing interests and their associates realized the force of opinion that they were up against, and saw that they really did run a risk of losing their hold on the industry out of which they were making large fortunes. They were exceedingly wroth with Mr. Justice Sankey on account of the statement in the interim report signed by that gentleman as Chairman, and three other members of the Coal Commission (none of them nominated by the miners), that even upon the evidence already given the present ownership and working in the coal industry stands condemned, and some other system must be substituted for it. All possible means of inuencing public Opinion have been employed to prevent the community from removing any further services or industries from the domain of private profit to that of public service. Meetings of shareholders have been called, and chairmen's speeches directed against Nationalization have been advertisedat great length in the newspapers; pamphlets and publications have been given away. By the hundred thousand, attempting to prove how injurious to the community it would be if the mining and delivery of coal were to be placed on the same footing as the collection and delivery of letters and parcels, the re moval of household refuse, and the provision of a drainage system; the greater part of the Press, which, it is only too well known, is owned and controlled by the rich, has carried on a long and bitter campaign against Nat