need hardly be discussed. The
greatest admirer of the present system would not argue that security of
status is among the advantages which it offers to its employees. It is
notorious that in some districts, at least, managers are liable to be
dismissed, however professionally competent they may be, if they
express in public views which are not approved by the directors of
their company. Indeed, the criticism which is normally made on the
public services, and made not wholly without reason, is that the
security which they offer is excessive. On the question of salaries
rather more than one-half of the colliery companies of Great Britain
themselves supplied figures to the Coal Industry Commission.[1] If
their returns may be trusted, it would appear that mine-managers are
paid, as a class, salaries the parsimony of which is the more
surprising in view of the emphasis laid, and quite properly laid, by
the mine-owners on the managers' responsibilities. The service of the
State does not normally offer, and ought not to offer, financial prizes
comparable with those of private industry. But it is improbable, had
the mines been its property during {167} the last ten years, that more
than one-half the managers would have been in receipt of salaries of
under L301 per year, and of less than L500 in 1919, by which time
prices had more than doubled, and the aggregate profits of the
mine-owners (of which the greater part was, however, taken by the State
in taxation) had amounted in five years to L160,000,000. It would be
misleading to suggest that the salaries paid to mine-managers are
typical of private industry, nor need it be denied that the probable
effect of turning an industry into a public service would be to reduce
the size of the largest prizes at present offered. What is to be
expected is that the lower and medium salaries would be raised, and the
largest somewhat diminished. It is hardly to be denied, at any rate,
that the majority of brain workers in industry have nothing to fear on
financial grounds from such a change as is proposed by Mr. Justice
Sankey. Under the normal organization of industry, profits, it cannot
be too often insisted, do not go to them but to shareholders. There
does not appear to be any reason to suppose that the salaries of
managers in the mines making more than 5/- profit a ton were any larger
than those making under 3/-.

The financial aspect of the change is not, however, the only poi