IV

POLITICS

3 r 5

more considered by the management than themaximum of profit for the shareholders. Theshareholders must be satisfied by conventionallyadequate dividends; but once this is secured,the direct interest of the management oftenconsists in avoiding criticism from the publicand from the customers of the concern. Thisis particularly the case if their great size orsemi-monopolistic position renders them con-spicuous in the public eye and vulnerable topublic attack. The extreme instance, perhaps,of this tendency in the case of an institution,theoretically the unrestricted property of privatepersons, is the Bank of England . It is almosttrue to say that there is no class of persons inthe Kingdom of whom the Governor of theBank of England thinks less when he decideson his policy than of his shareholders. Theirrights, in excess of their conventional dividend,have already sunk to the neighbourhood ofzero. But the same thing is partly true ofmany other big institutions. They are, astime goes on, socialising themselves.

Not that this is unmixed gain. The samecauses promote conservatism and a waning ofenterprise. In fact, we already have in thesecases many of the faults as well as the advan-tages of State Socialism. Nevertheless we seehere, I think, a natural line of evolution. Thebattle of Socialism against unlimited privateprofit is being won in detail hour by hour. Inthese particular fields—it remains acute else-where—this is no longer the pressing problem.