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Show ! BehindM ByPAULMALLON Released by Western Newspaper Union. ,. WAR EXPERIENCE HAS e DEFEATED SOCIALISM v WASHINGTON. They say Mr. e Churchill blundered when he e claimed socialism would bring a gestapo to the British, rob the individual indi-vidual of his rights and make him a 0 slave to the state at least the political politi-cal experts say it in chorus here andabroad.As they see it Churchill Church-ill is "the man who won the war" and should have run for reelection on that platform. I wonder. The very day he spoke, a British-spirited British-spirited province in Canada voted on socialism. so-cialism. In Ontario, a straight - out so cialist movement, r Churchill caUe(J tte Coopera. 1 tive Commonwealth federation, had i won astonishing success last time, i gaining 34 seats, more than a third i of the provincial parliament The program was government owner-i owner-i ship of banks, insurance companies, C railways and certain heavy indus tries. This was to be the new rising i political movement of the postwar t Canadian world but it was nipped far below the bud, and, in fact, frost-killed, when the people of industrial in-dustrial Ontario (where labor is strong) cut its power to an insignifl-, insignifl-, cant 6 seats in a parliament of 90 votes. All Canada is furnishing another ' test of socialism and you can check the results, but if CCF cannot win ' in the British labor center of On- tario it cannot hope for much anywhere any-where outside the radical far west farming provinces. In Britain the Labor party leader, lead-er, Mr. Atlee, answered Churchill directly, defending the theory of so-' so-' cialism against the ideal of private enterprise for private pri-vate profit. While Churchill may have taken political license li-cense with the gestapo ges-tapo deduction, he 3id not exaggerate I 'I the basic issue, which has been Atlee laid; "Do you want socialism or free enterprise?" The war experience of people has not been favorable to socialism. The lack of competition among sellers has destroyed the interests of the consumers today, and government management has nowhere been satisfactory to the people. Unless a buyer can walk out of a store and ' go to another to purchase what he wants, he can never be protected as to the quality of merchandise he fcuys or as to price, no matter how much the government regulates it. Every "man and woman has found that out to his great discomfort during dur-ing this war, not from books or propaganda, but out of his own daily experience in living. Competition is the only thing which protects the consumers, who are all the people. Government ownership own-ership and operation is as noncompetitive non-competitive as a trust, a cartel or a business monopoly. Once any single force gets the power of exclusive ex-clusive operation, the buyer must accept the terms. Where competition compe-tition is most active, the buyer is best protected. Consider the service serv-ice the public gets on those western railroads where some are bemoaning bemoan-ing the parallel lines. It is much better than upon eastern roads which control a monopoly of travel. This is true of the buying of all goods or services. It is true of hotel .accommodations, of buying cigarettes, ciga-rettes, of renting a house or buying a dress. If one power (government or private) owns all the business, or is in control of the operation for any reason, the public interests are not well served. Of course, they attribute at-tribute our experiences to a shortage short-age of goods or help. That is true, but the economic effect has been the destruction of competition. The consumer con-sumer could be told what to buy and at how much. He could not get it across the street, cheaper or better. In my opinion, government ownership owner-ship is in the public interest only when it is in itself competitive competing with private interests to serve the public better. Consider the two Canadian railroads, one private and one government owned. The public gets much better service than if the- government owned both and railroading became a business ot government bureaucracy, having political po-litical directors decide policies. Economically, socialism cannot generate business-like competition. In a competitive economy, a great portion of business develops from the necessity of one concern to get ahead of another. This stimulates interest in-terest in products and sells more ol them. The very Incentive of competition compe-tition adds to national income. I suspect Churchill (who was never nev-er much of a politician) may have seized upon the most popular valid issue he could present The labor leaders who took up a proposal to go "halfway to communism" have certainly not chosen the best time. |