Looking at the matter from another angle, as all wages coincide more or less closely with the cost of the means of subsistence required by the worker in each occupation, there is no possibility that employment by the State or by public utility corporations could depart from the general rule. If important differences did exist competition for the better-paid jobs would have an equalising tendency. On the other hand, the capitalists as tax-payers never miss an opportunity in Parliament and elsewhere of striving to keep the pay of Government employees down to the market rate.

The view expressed by the Chairman at the Conference of the Union of Post Office Workers in 1943 that “Post Office workers know that at present there was very little difference between their conditions in a nationalised industry and those of workers outside” (Daily Herald, 4 May, 1943), confirms this estimate.

There is yet another factor to be borne in mind in making comparisons. It is not only the supporters of nationalisation who claim that their particular form of organisation pays higher wages ; the claim is also made by public utility corporations, the private monopolies and the co-operative societies, as well as certain well-known companies such as Cadbury’s, Rowntree’s and Ford’s. When the telephones were taken over by the Liberal Government the Postmaster-General, Mr Herbert Samuel, claimed that the 19,000 employees who were taken over had their pay raised by a total of £175,000 a year as well as pensions, reduced hours and longer holidays. He estimated that over-all improvements averaged 8/- a week (Times, 21 May, 1912 ; quoted in The Case for Nationalisation, A. Emil Davies. George Allen and Unwin, 1920, p. 176).

When the London Passenger Transport Board was formed the Board claimed that wages were raised.

Against these examples, however, we have to set the claims of private combines.

Lord McGowan, Chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd., makes a claim that wages are higher in the industries which have formed cartels. “In wages, salaries and conditions of employment, welfare, and relations between labour and management, it is, I think, true to say that conditions have been markedly better in cartelized industries than in those which have remained in a less advanced stage of organisation” (Times, 20 October, 1943).

The Co-operative movement likewise makes the claim that its staff are better treated than are the staffs of private traders.

The question we have to consider is, therefore, not merely whether nationalisation leads to higher wages, but whether all large-scale organisation does so, and in addition whether certain firms which make a point of claiming that they treat their workers well, can justify the claim.

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