Nor does this change in the character of property involve a breach with the existing order so sharp as to be impracticable. The phraseology of political controversy continues to reproduce the conventional antitheses of the early nineteenth century; "private enterprise" and "public ownership" are still contrasted with each other as light with darkness or darkness with light. But, in reality, behind the formal shell of the traditional legal system the elements of a new body of relationship have already been prepared, and find piece-meal application through policies devised, not by socialists, but by men who repeat the formulae of individualism, at the very moment when they are undermining it. The Esch-Cummins Act in America, the {119} Act establishing a Ministry of Transport in England, Sir Arthur Duckham's scheme for the organization of the coal mines, the proposals with regard to the coal industry of the British Government itself, appear to have the common characteristic of retaining private ownership in name, while attenuating it in fact, by placing its operators under the supervision, accompanied sometimes by a financial guarantee, of a public authority. Schemes of this general character appear, indeed, to be the first instinctive reaction produced by the discovery that private enterprise is no longer functioning effectively; it is probable that they possess certain merits of a technical order analogous to those associated with the amalgamation of competing firms into a single combination. It is questionable, however, whether the compromise which they represent is permanently tenable. What, after all, it may be asked, are the advantages of private ownership when it has been pared down to the point which policies of this order propose? May not the "owner" whose rights they are designed to protect not unreasonably reply to their authors, "Thank you for nothing"? Individual enterprise has its merits: so also, perhaps, has public ownership. But, by the time these schemes have done with it, not much remains of "the simple and obvious system of natural liberty," while their inventors are precluded from appealing to the motives which are emphasized by advocates of nationalization. It is one thing to be an entrepreneur with a world of adventure and unlimited profits--if they can be achieved--before one. It is quite another to be a director of a railway company or coal {120} corporation with a minimum rate of profit guaranteed by the State, and a maximum rate of profit which cannot be exceeded. Hybrids are apt to be sterile. It may be questioned whether, in drawing the teeth of private capitalism, this type of compromise does not draw out most of its virtues as well.