Germany appears ready to contemplate a big experiment in socialization—namely, that of her mines—and although a section of the committee set to report on the matter is unfavourably inclined, we anticipate that the socialist elements in the country will almost certainly manage to enforce the proposal. Yet Germany has before her eyes a standing proof of the evils of socialization in the electric light works of Berlin. When these were conducted as a private enterprise they not only paid handsome profits, but gave equally handsome royalties to the city, running, we believe, into a few millions of marks per annum. In an evil day before the war the reformers of Berlin resolved upon the municipalization of the works, and from that time they have been a catastrophe. No longer did the municipality collect welcome sums for the relief of taxation, but instead the works were run at a huge loss which the advent of war only increased. This case was made the subject of a very serious lecture by a German to his countrymen only recently—perhaps in view of the proposal affecting coal mines—and it is difficult to see how to get away from its moral. When, however, socialistic schemes are on hand, history often receives short shrift indeed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.