When it is remembered that the Post Office insisted on being paid one-tenth, not of the profits, but of the gross receipts, the wonder is that our telephone system is not more backward than it is. Lord Avebury, of course, uses this and other instances, such as the opposition of municipalities owning tramway and gas undertakings, to tramway extensions in adjoining districts, and licences to motor omnibuses and also to the introduction of electricity for lighting and power, as an argument against nationalisation and municipal trading.[11] That these constitute a strong argument against public monopolies being worked for profit, I readily admit, but they do not weaken the argument that all such concerns which must, in their very nature, be incapable of effective competition, should be taken over by the community, and be worked solely for its benefit. What possible chance is there of competition in a telephone system? It is, of course, an essential element to its success that each subscriber should be able to communicate with every other one. How, then, can it ever have been imagined that there could be any effective competition between rival systems? And yet competition was actually attempted between various municipalities and the National Telephone Company, and afterwards the Post Office itself was authorised to “compete” with that Company. The ultimate purchase by the State was, of course, a foregone conclusion, but at what expense of both time and money has this at length been effected! The complaints which have been made since the completion of this purchase are evidently the result, not of nationalisation, but of the mistaken practice followed in a fruitless attempt at making or retaining so-called “profits” of the telegraph system, by at first putting “every possible difficulty” in the way of telephones, then attempting to compete with them, and then waiting a number of years before completing the purchase, with the result of being compelled to take over a large number of obsolete plant and instruments, and linking them up with a new system, thus producing a state of confusion and useless expenditure of time and money, which could all have been avoided by purchase of the patents and patent rights more than 30 years ago. It is only right to say that Lord Avebury was still of opinion in 1907 that the resolution of the Government to buy up the National Telephone Company was “an extraordinary and most unfortunate policy.”[12] Mr. Hanbury, who was the Minister mainly responsible in 1906 for the purchase of the telephones, had evidently changed his opinion since 1889, when, in answer to a deputation in favour of purchasing the telephones, he said, according to a report quoted by Lord Avebury from “The Times”:--