To rid her of this overcharge, Socialists propose to secure goods for everyone at cost price by nationalizing the industries which produce them. This terrifies the idlers and their dependents so much that they do their best to persuade the Intelligent Woman in their newspapers and speeches and sermons that nationalization is an unnatural crime which must utterly ruin the country. That is all nonsense. We have plenty of nationalization at present; and nobody is any the worse for it. The army and navy, the civil service, the posts and telegraphs and telephones, the roads and bridges, the lighthouses and royal dockyards and arsenals, are all nationalized services; and anyone declaring that they were unnatural crimes and were ruining the country would be transferred to the county lunatic asylum, also a national institution. And we have much more nationalization than this in the form called municipalization, the only difference being that instead of the central Westminster Parliament owning and conducting the industry for the nation, as it does the Post Office, the industry is owned and conducted by City Corporations or County Councils for the local ratepayers. Thus we get publicly owned electric light works, gas works, water works, trams, baths and washhouses, public health services, libraries, picture galleries, museums, lavatories, parks and piers with pavilions and bands and stages, besides many other public services which concern the maintenance of the Empire, and of which the public knows nothing. Most of these things could be done by private companies and shops; indeed many of them are done at present partly by private enterprise and partly by public: for instance, in London private electric lighting companies supply light in one district whilst the Borough Councils provide a municipal supply in others. But the municipal supply is cheaper, and with honest and capable management always must be cheaper than the private company’s supply. You will ask, why must it? Well, shortly, because it pays less for its capital, less for its management, and nothing at all for profits, this triple advantage going to the consumer in cheapness. But to take in the whole scope of public enterprise as compared with private, let us begin with the nationalized services. Why is it that the nationalized Post Office is so much cheaper and more extensive than a private letter-carrying company could make it, that private letter-carrying is actually forbidden by law?