Public Ownership.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19062, 26 July 1927, Page 8

Public Ownership.

It is curious to find a journal so wellinformed as the Economist fathering the statement that " Canada seems in a '"fair way to become the earliest ex- " ample of widespread public owner- " ship in the British Empire." This is the opening sentence of an article on Public Ownership in Canada to which the Economist gives a place in its editorial columns, and when the supporting facts are supplied they are (1) that Canada has State-owned railways, (2) that Niagara has been harnessed by the Government of Ontario, (3) that " the coal mines of Canada—or certain " of them to begin with —may be State-, " owned before very long," (4) that a national merchant marine came out of the war, (5) that State-owned aeroplanes are being used for police, mail, and forestry work, and (6) that the Department of Trade and Commerce now has its own Motion Picture Bureau. Although this is a substantial measure of public ownership, it does not, with one exception, include any form of State control with which we are not already familiar in New Zealand and Australia, and it of course omits a good deal which we have " enjoyed " for very many years. The writer indeed seems to know that" Australia h£s her "State-owned railways, and certain "public utilities under the same kind " of control," that " she has moved with " a great deal of swiftness along those "lines," and that "the end is not yet." But he does not seem to suspect that all the railways of Australia and New Zealand are State-owned, and all the important hydro-electric works; that the whole of our telephone service is national; that we are not merely about to nationalise certain coal-mines, but have long "ince done so; that Australia at least has'a State shipping line, and that it will be as difficult soon to run even a private bus in New Zealand as it is already to operate a private train. And we have also, of course, State banking, and State insurance, and State trustee offices, as well as publiclyowned gas-works, and abattoirs, and electricity supply shops, and baths, and quarries, and dairies and hotels. If Canada were the first, or the most advanced, or the most eager exponent of the merits of public ownership in the Empire New Zealand would find it easy not to be jealous, but the Economist writer can never have heard that there is a Dominion whose total population is only about twice that of Montreal, but whose State servants number 79,000 and draw £18,000,000 annually in wages.