Nationalization, then, is not an end, but a means to an end, and when the question of ownership has been settled the question of administration remains for solution. As a means it is likely to be indispensable in those industries in which the rights of private proprietors cannot easily be modified without the action of the State, just as the purchase of land by county councils is a necessary step to the establishment of small holders, when landowners will not voluntarily part with their property for the purpose. But the object in purchasing land is to establish small holders, not to set up farms administered by state officials; and the object of nationalizing mining or railways or the manufacture of steel should not be to establish any particular form of state management, but to release those who do constructive work from the control of those whose sole interest is pecuniary gain, in order that they may be free to {118} apply their energies to the true purpose of industry, which is the provision of service, not the provision of dividends. When the transference of property has taken place, it will probably be found that the necessary provision for the government of industry will involve not merely the freedom of the producers to produce, but the creation of machinery through which the consumer, for whom he produces, can express his wishes and criticize the way in which they are met, as at present he normally cannot. But that is the second stage in the process of reorganizing industry for the performance of function, not the first. The first is to free it from subordination to the pecuniary interests of the owner of property, because they are the magnetic pole which sets all the compasses wrong, and which causes industry, however swiftly it may progress, to progress in the wrong direction.