anies, and of great catering companies, and of enormous
private organisations such as the Imperial Tobacco Company, has shown
the enormous advantage of providing cheap facilities to the largest
possible number of customers; so that fears of natural restriction of
banking facilities, through monopoly, if they cannot be set altogether
aside, are not by any means a certain consequence even of the
establishment of monopoly in private enterprise.

Still weaker is Mr Webb's assumption that if the interests of the
shareholders with "their perpetual and insatiable desire for profit"
were eliminated, cheap and plentiful banking facilities would
inevitably result from bureaucratic management. The contrary has
been shown to be the case in the examples of the Post Office, of the
Telephone Service, and the London Water Supply. In the case of the
telegraph and the telephones, the Government took over prosperous
businesses, and has managed them at a loss. In the matter of the Post
Office it is not possible to compare the Government with individual
enterprise, but it will generally be admitted that the Telephone
Service has by no means been improved since the Government took it
over. Mr Webb points out that nationalisation, whether of banks or of
other forms of enterprise, does not necessarily mean government under
a Minister by a branch of the Civil Service. But it is impossible to
ignore the fact that as soon as nationalisation takes place those who
are responsible for the management of the enterprise are practically
certain to develop the qualities and idiosyncrasies of civil servants,
which are so unlikely to tend to elasticity, rapidity and efficiency
in business management.

In fact, Mr Webb practically grants this point by the very interesting
development he suggests by which the two chief functions of banking
should be differentiated, and one of them should be nationalised
and the other should remain in the hands of private enterprise. He
develops this truly ingenious suggestion as follows:--

"Just as we have (except for some obsolescent survivals) separated
the function of issuing paper money from that of keeping current
accounts, so we shall separate the function of keeping current
accounts from that of money-lending. The habit of the British
banker of combining in one and the same concern (_a_) the
essentially routine business of keeping current accounts or
receiving deposits; and (_b_) the mu