§ 3.
Let me finally quote the chairman of one of the most enterprising and enlightened business organizations of our time to show that in claiming the better type of business man for modern Socialism I am making no vain boast. Sir John Brunner may not call himself a Socialist, but this is very probably due to the fact that he gets his ideas of Socialism from the misquotations of its interested adversaries. This that follows from the Manchester Guardian is pure Socialism.
Speaking at the annual meeting of Brunner, Mond and Co., Ltd., in Liverpool (1907), the chairman, Sir John Brunner, M.P., made a remarkable pronouncement on the subject of the collective ownership of canals. He said:—
“I have been one of a Royal Commission visiting the North of France, Belgium, and Northern Germany, and our duty has been to examine what those three countries have done in the improvement of their canals and their waterways. We have been very deeply impressed by what we have seen, and I can tell you to-day, speaking as a man of business to men of business, that the fact that in these three countries there is communal effort—that is to say, that the State in money and in credit for the benefit of the national trade—has brought to those three countries enormous, almost incalculable, benefits; and I think that any man, any intelligent man, who studies this matter as I have studied it for a great many years, will come the conclusion, as I have come very clearly and decidedly, that the old policy which we have adopted for generations of leaving all public works to private enterprise—the old policy, so called, of laissez faire—is played out completely, and I am of opinion, very firmly, that, if we mean to hold our own in matters of trade, we must learn to follow the example that has been set us not only by France, Belgium, and Germany, but by the United States and by every one of the Colonies of our Empire. Everywhere do you find that trade is helped by the effort of the community, by the force of the State, and I shall be very heartily pleased if those who hear me will think the matter over and decide for themselves whether or not we as business people—preeminently the business people of the world—are to maintain the old policy of leaving everything to private enterprise, or whether we are to act together for the good of all in this important matter of the national trade.”