The nationalization of minting is necessary because only a Government can establish a legal tender currency. Cheques and the like, circulating as private currency, are not legal tender money but only private and insecure title deeds to such money; but legal tender money is a Government title deed to goods. Cheques and bills of exchange are senseless unless expressed in terms of money. The nationalization of the manufacture of money is a matter of course. The case for nationalization of banking, though less obvious, is equally strong. Profiteering in spare money. Municipal banks. There is no mystery about banking; and those who now conduct it are as available for public as for private employment. 264 57 COMPENSATION FOR NATIONALIZATION The fate of the shareholder when the banks are nationalized. Purchase of their shares no expense to the nation if the cost be levied on the whole body of capitalists. The apparent compensation is really distributed confiscation. The process a well established and familiar one. Candidates who advocate expropriation without compensation do not know their business and should not be voted for. Alternative of Government entering competitively into industries and beating private enterprises out of them. Objections. Wastefulness of competition. A competing State enterprise would have to allow competition with itself, which is often inadmissible in the case of ubiquitous services. The private competitor is indifferent to the ruin of a defeated rival; but the State must avoid this. 268 58 PRELIMINARIES TO NATIONALIZATION Nationalization, though theoretically sound, and its expense a bogey, is practically an arduous undertaking, involving the organization of a central department with local services throughout the country. It is possible only in stable and highly organized States. Revolutions and proclamations cannot by themselves nationalize anything. Governments may plunder and wreck State industries to avoid imposing unpopular direct taxes. 274 59 CONFISCATION WITHOUT COMPENSATION There is always a clamor by indignant idealists for direct retributive confiscation without compensation. Its possibilities. Taxation of capital as a means of forcing defaulters to surrender their title deeds and share certificates to the Government is plausible and not physically impossible. 276 60 REVOLT OF THE PARASITIC PROLETARIAT The expropriation of the rich is objected to on the ground that the rich give employment. The sense in which this is true. The parasitic proletariat. Bond Street and Bournemouth. All transfers of purchasing power from the rich to the Government depress the parasitic trades and their employees. A sudden wholesale transfer would produce an epidemic of bankruptcy and unemployment. Governments must immediately expend the incomes they confiscate. 277 61 SAFETY VALVES