Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/203

 Rh and an alkali trust, tends naturally to facilitate, almost to invite, their assumption by the State. There will be a consideration paid for each transfer—a consideration possibly declining in amount as the process of absorption continues, for with avenues of investment closing one by one, capital will he worth less and less; and then, by-and-by, readjusted schemes of taxation will quietly, but effectually, by sure if tender instalments, withdraw to the national use the interest on all investments supported by and (to use the appropriate language) oppressing the industries of the people. This may seem clear, but it is really cloudy, and if its analysis is pursued to the end it will be found that the old obstacles lurk in it scarcely disguised. Let it be noted that whether a town council has taken over gasworks or the nation a telegraphic system, the full, and perhaps more than the full, price has hitherto been paid. The error of excess, if it has happened, should not be repeated, but that is past history. I have said a full price has been paid, but this is scarcely accurate, and requires explanation. Neither town nor nation has ever raised the price direct from its ratepayers or taxpayers. The capital value has in all cases been borrowed so far as it has not remained a debt to the sellers, and the actual repayment has been made out of surplus profits or added rates or taxes in subsequent years. For the rest there has been no check whatever on the opportunities of investment. If by the methods I have indicated the debts on the transferred undertakings have been cleared off, the capital so repaid has found other invitations open to industrial employment at home and abroad, and as one door shuts another opens. Municipal indebtedness has in fact increased in spite of sinking funds and other processes of reducing debt. The purchase of a gas undertaking or of a telegraphic system may be wise or unwise, and it may be expedient or not to engage in similar transactions, but these precedents do not in any degree lead up to that organization of Socialism in which private enterprise and private property disappear. What they amount to at the most is this, that taxpayers and ratepayers by processes of unconscious and involuntary saving have acquired a little common capital, whereat we may all rejoice; while side by side with their savings have been accumulated the much vaster savings of scattered units among the same taxpayers and ratepayers, whereat also we may all rejoice. In the suggested addition of deft taxation which by larger and larger slices shall take away all the income derived from the use of industrial capital there does reappear a suggested means of realizing Socialism emancipated from capitalism, but it involves the old