ries on some
business, it does not by any means follow that the State should
inspect all things and could efficiently carry on all business.
Questions such as "If the State can build battleships and make
swords, why not also trading ships and ploughshares,"[262] are
ridiculous. One might as well ask, "If Messrs. Whiteley or Marshall
Field can supply furniture, houses, dresses, and funerals, being
universal providers, why not also battleships, armies, and colonies?"
It is also not true that the State or municipal corporations have more
business ability than private business men. As an example of
successful business management Socialists are fond of pointing to the
Post Office, and of asserting that no private company could work as
efficiently and as cheaply. These statements are erroneous. The
success of the British Post Office, as of every post office, is due
not to ability but to monopoly, as the following example will prove.
Private individuals in Germany discovered some years ago a flaw in the
legislation regarding the Post Office which enabled them to compete
with the Imperial Post Office, not in postal business between
different towns, but in local delivery. Private post offices sprang up
in many towns and began to deliver letters at the rate of two pfennigs
(one farthing) each. Although the German Post Office is the most
efficient Post Office in Europe, it could not compete with these
private post offices, and, after lengthy competition, steps had to be
taken to extend the postal monopoly to town deliveries. The British
Post Office, like most public offices, is a most conservative
institution. Every progress and every reform had to be forced upon it
by outside agitation. Services such as money delivery at private
residences, cash on delivery parcels, &c., which other countries have
enjoyed during several decades, are stubbornly denied to England.
Private competition would probably have furnished these conveniences
long ago. In London the Messenger Boy Company competes with the Post
Office in the carrying of express letters, and various private
carriers compete with it in delivering parcels, and in both instances
the private trader supplies a better and cheaper service than the
Government Post Office. A comparison of the Post Office telephone in
England and the private telephone in America shows the great
superiority of the latter. The slow and ultra-conservative British
Post Office supplies no proof that the Gover