LORD GAINFORD AND THE COAL COMMISSION.
[To THE EDITOR or THE "SPECTATOR.") SIP, I trust the whole country has studied the statement eubmitted by Lord Gainford on Tuesday to the Coal Industry Commission. It was a temperate and masterly exposure of the case for nationalization, and it came with all the greater authority from one who, first as President of the Board of Education and secondly as Postmaster-General, has had intimate and personal experience of the State both ae an employer of labour and as the conductor of large business enterprises, and who, in addition, knows the coal industry through and through. Probably there are thousands of people like myself who, while opposed to nationalization in principle, are insufficiently acquainted with the conditions of coal-mining to realize its peculiar inapplicability to that complex, highly speculative, incessantly fluctuating business. Lord Gainford's evidence gives them for the first time a reasoned and detailed analysis of the reasons why of all industries the coal industry is the least fitted to be operated by a Government Department. The argument he builds up is so powerful, the point of view so broad, and the spirit in which he unfolds it is so practical and so humane, that believers in private ownership might well be content to rest their case on his testimony alone. Lord Gainford touched on all the principal aspects and ramifications of the industry, and succeeded in throwing on each of them a light that really illumined; and I do not see how any one can weigh his contentions and the facts by which he supports them without agreeing that the nationalization of the mines would be an immeasurable disaster to all British industry. But what I would especially like to emphasize is that Lord Gainford did not confine himself merely to destructive criticism or to beating off attacks. He outlined a scheme for the future organization of the industry which, so far as an outsider can judge—and, after all, it is to us outsiders that both the miners and the mine-owners make their appeal—seems workable and admirably conducive both to its peace and its efficiency. I do not propose even to summarize his plan, as my sole purpose in writing this letter is to draw attention to the fact that Lord Gainford's evidence not only demonstrated the enormous dangers of nationalization, but rendered the further service of suggesting a practicable alternative.—I am, Sir, dc.,
BR ITANNICUE.
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