trust dumps its surplus product in a country at cost price, the home corporation could probably meet it by availing itself of the best methods of production and the economies of combination, by reducing prices temporarily as the Gas Strip Association did in 1902, or, like the Imperial Tobacco Co., by carrying the war into the enemy's country. The first duties of the State in aiding domestic industries against outsiders should be to ensure efficiency by providing a suitable education for all the industrial classes from top to bottom, and to prevent the hampering of commerce either by the railway companies or by shipping rings. If the German Government makes itself a partner with private industry by granting low freights for export over the national railways, then in the long run we shall find ourselves compelled to do with the railways what we have done with the telegraphs, and work them as a national system. If we cannot grasp the idea that commerce and industry are no longer merely individual undertakings, but predominantly national services, we shall neither understand the significance of recent changes nor the real character of the problems of the near future. So long as a nation is to exist as a nation it cannot endure servitude to a foreign trust and the disappearance of necessary industries. A protective tariff is so favorable to individual as opposed to national interests that it is naturally the first crude method of defence proposed, but rather than protect our industries against the efficient foreigner we want to force them up to his level; in the long run it is only efficiency that is dangerous. The Cunard subsidy plan, where the Government lends capital on conditions as to moderation in rates and efficiency in service, is a safer precedent, but with participation in the risks of capital should go too participation in management.

The international war of trusts may lead to two other results calling for State intervention. It may end, like the Tobacco War, in the division of territory, thus destroying the safety valve of foreign competition, or in amalgamation. In either case the possibilities of tyranny are enhanced. There is no effective defence against an international trust, except nationalization, for formal dissolution of the union would probably result only in the substitution of an equally objectionable and far less vulnerable private understanding. Public opinion turns inevitably towards the replacement of private initiative by national control, and nothing would hasten that development more rapidly than either the parcelling out of the world among the trusts or the appearance of many large international organizations.

RECENT BOOKS ON TRUSTS.

British Industries. Edited by Prof. W. J. ASHLEY. Longmans, 1903. 5s. 6d. Trusts, Pools and Corporations. Edited by Prof. RIPLEY. Ginn and Co., 1905. 8s. 6d.

The History of the Standard Oil Company. Miss IDA M. TARBELL.

Heinemann, 1905. 248. net.

Two vols. ;

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MUNICIPALIZATION BY PROVINCES.

The first Report of the Committee of the Society appointed to consider the Reform of Local Government, presented to the Society on 26th May, 1905, by Wm. SanderS, L.C.C., the Chairman of the Committee, and subsequently adopted.

Industries and Local Government Areas.

WITH the growth of municipal enterprise it has become obvious that the development of the collective control of the economic life of society is largely dependent upon the capacity of the community to adapt its local government machinery to changing social and economic conditions. Much of the existing machinery in England was created for the purpose of dealing with conditions widely different from those of to-day, and for exercising powers far narrower in scope than those which are now imposed upon it by legislation, or which the community demands that it should acquire. Local authorities are given duties to perform, or are allowed to assume duties, without due consideration of their fitness for the responsibility. experiments in municipal activities are entered upon under unfavorable circumstances which preclude the possibility of complete success, whereby opportunities are given to the anti-Collectivist to vaunt the superior advantages of private enterprise.

One of the first points, if not the first point, to be considered in connection with any further extension of the powers of municipalities, or of the collective organization of industry in any form, is that of the area over which a municipal or other local governing authority should govern. Under the old conception, or want of conception, of the duties of local government authorities this appeared to be a matter of small importance, although in connection with main roads. and sewers it was sometimes borne in mind by the legislators. When a local authority was appointed to deal solely with paving, it was a matter of minor importance whether it should have authority to pave fifty yards of the Strand only, or the whole of the streets and roads of London. But when the community proceeds to provide through its own administrative machinery water, gas, electric light and power, means of communication, educational facilities, and many other services, and, moreover, must compete with private undertakings, the promoters of which are anxious and willing for a consideration to relieve the community of the burden, the question of area becomes of paramount importance.

Tramways and Light Railways.

This can be seen at once in the case of tramways and light railways. There is no existing government area which is generally suitable for the effective and profitable management of a publicly owned tramway system. Unless a town council can persuade the neighboring local authorities to agree to some arrangement under which joint action can be taken for ownership and control, a dwarfed and crippled public service is created, comparing unfavorably in reality, as well as in the public mind, with a privately owned system which, by Act of Parliament, can, within wide boundaries, run where it listeth. The town council unit as a traniway area is obviously inadequate in the crowded centres of the North; the county council area, although less open to objection, would not be wholly satisfactory. For instance, an efficient tramway service for London and the surrounding district ought to extend over country governed by the five county councils of London, Middlesex, Surrey, Essex and Kent, and many county boroughs within their boundaries. This area is served at present by disconnected, incomplete systems, partly under public and partly under private ownership. In the existing dismembered condition of the metropolitan and extranetropolitan tramway service, it is impossible for the community to ecure the full advantages of this form of transit in either convenience r economy. The big centres of population in the Midlands and the North suffer in the same way, and provide equally convincing evidence of the imperative need for the establishment for transit purposes of new authorities having control over areas, the boundaries of which might in no case be coterminous with those of existing local govern

ment areas.

Municipal Electricity and Industrial Progress.

Another service which, in order to be economically administered under public ownership, requires new authorities and areas is the provision of electric light and power. The municipal electric light and power works now in being were, in many cases, prematurely born, and, unless they can be given room to expand beyond the limits which now confine them, they are likely to become, not only horrible examples of the failure of public enterprise, but also serious obstacles to industrial advance. The metropolis offers a striking example of the failure to appreciate the importance of area in relation to the generation and supply of electricity. The metropolitan borough councils were made the authorities for this purpose, and several of them have erected generating stations and laid down their own self-contained systems. The limitations of the usefulness of their parochial installations are now obvious. For instance, the Battersea Borough Council approaches a railway company with an offer to light a huge goods station with municipal electricity. The goods station lies on the confines of the Battersea Borough Council's area, and unfortunately a small part of the station to be lighted is within the borders of a neighboring borough council which has sold to a private company its powers to supply electricity. This company