stem. In
the case of enterprises not subject to foreign competition, we had begun
to develop a fairly satisfactory system of control of public utility
services which were of a monopolistic character.

Finally, there had been growing up a complete system of collective
bargaining and conciliation, and though we always heard of it whenever
there was dispute and strife, the ordinary public did not know that this
machinery was working and developing in many great and important
industries a feeling of co-operation or at all events of conciliation
between the two sides. I only mention these points very briefly in
passing in order to show that with the evolution of modern industry we
were already feeling our way, haltingly and far too slowly, it is true,
towards a solution of its most serious defects.

Turning to the present situation, we have to face the fact that Great
Britain is to-day faced with one of the most serious positions in its
economic history. We must make allowances for the readily understood
pessimism of a miners' leader, but it should arrest attention that Mr.
Frank Hodges has recently described the present situation as the coming
of the great famine in England. For nearly two decades before the war
there was occurring a slight fall in the real wages of British
workpeople. Food was becoming dearer, as the world's food supply was not
increasing as fast as the world's industrial population, and the
industrial workers of the world had, therefore, to offer more of their
product to secure the food they needed. Hence the cost of living was
rising faster than wages, except in trades where great technical
advances were being made. There is some reason to fear that the war may
have accentuated this tendency.

For some years the distant countries of the world have had to do without
European manufactured goods. You are all aware of the tendency, for
example, of India, Australia, and Canada to develop their own steel
resources and to create manufacturing industries of all kinds. Moreover,
we have lost part of our hold on the food-producing countries of the
world by the sale of our capital investments in those countries to pay
for the war. These and other considerations all suggest that we may find
it increasingly difficult to maintain our position as one of the main
suppliers of the manufactured goods of the world. In such circumstances
we shall be hard put to it to maintain, far less raise, the pre-war
standard of livi