On the question of monopolies and exploitation, though we hear a great deal of the growth of capitalistic organisation, in fact we find that, of the three greatest industrial countries in the world, Great Britain is the least trust-ridden, mainly because of its free trade system.  In the case of enterprises not subject to foreign competition, we had begun to develop a fairly satisfactory system of control of public utility services which were of a monopolistic character.

Finally, there had been growing up a complete system of collective bargaining and conciliation, and though we always heard of it whenever there was dispute and strife, the ordinary public did not know that this machinery was working and developing in many great and important industries a feeling of co-operation or at all events of conciliation between the two sides.  I only mention these points very briefly in passing in order to show that with the evolution of modern industry we were already feeling our way, haltingly and far too slowly, it is true, towards a solution of its most serious defects.

Turning to the present situation, we have to face the fact that Great Britain is to-day faced with one of the most serious positions in its economic history.  We must make allowances for the readily understood pessimism of a miners’ leader, but it should arrest attention that Mr. Frank Hodges has recently described the present situation as the coming of the great famine in England.  For nearly two decades before the war there was occurring a slight fall in the real wages of British workpeople.  Food was becoming dearer, as the world’s food supply was not increasing as fast as the world’s industrial population, and the industrial workers of the world had, therefore, to offer more of their product to secure the food they needed.  Hence the cost of living was rising faster than wages, except in trades where great technical advances were being made.  There is some reason to fear that the war may have accentuated this tendency.

For some years the distant countries of the world have had to do without European manufactured goods.  You are all aware of the tendency, for example, of India, Australia, and Canada to develop their own steel resources and to create manufacturing industries of all kinds.  Moreover, we have lost part of our hold on the food-producing countries of the world by the sale of our capital investments in those countries to pay for the war.  These and other considerations all suggest that we may find it increasingly difficult to maintain our position as one of the main suppliers of the manufactured goods of the world.  In such circumstances we shall be hard put to it to maintain, far less raise, the pre-war standard of living.