ABSTRACT
The urgent national need for enlarged supplies of munitions, home-grown food, ships, and certain other articles, led to extensive State intervention in production. National productive establishments were set up, and private establishments were controlled and sometimes accorded special grants to enable them to expand the operations. No evidence that intervention in the conditions was wasteful or ineffective could prove that it would display the same defects in the more favourable conditions of normal life. The objection to public intervention in industry applies both to intervention through control of private companies and to intervention through direct public operation. On the one side, companies, particularly when there is continuing regulation, may employ corruption, not only in the getting of the franchise, but also in the execution of it. On the other side, when public authorities themselves work enterprises, the possibilities of corruption are changed only in form.
