To accomplish the transition from a laissez faire government to a system of complete State control, England, France and the United States followed similar paths. To secure adequate transportation facilities for the national needs it was early perceived, especially in England, that the railway,. shipping, telegraph and tele phone, all these instruments of communication, must be operated as units under the direct con trol of the central governments and with small delay the required authority was granted the several administrations. Communication through railways, ships, telegraphs and telephone is, however, only an instrument of production, and production of arms, of food and of clothing, in the necessary quantities and of the proper kinds were equally essential to the successful prosecution of the war. Factories that had been producing non-essentials must be made to produce essentials and farms and mines must join the factories in furnishing raw materials, food, minerals and other necessary articles for an efficient life. To secure control over produc tion, factories and mines were commandeered, enlarged or closed down as the situation de manded. Having secured control of production and communication, a third step became natural in all cases and necessary in some, that of cop trol over distribution by means of which ma terial and labor available for use could be divided among men and industries in such a way that each unit of productive power would be most useful to the nation without regard to any other factors. In carrying this policy of completely unified state control into operation, the United States adopted a somewhat different plan from that followed in England. Whereas in the latter country authority was largely cen tred in the ministry of munitions, in the former it was divided up among a considerable number of administrative organs, partially in dependent although in general centralized under the immediate control of the President. Thus
where England had her ministry of munitions, the United States had the food and fuel ad ministrations, the emergency fleet corporation, the war trade board, the war industries board, the federal railway administration, the national war labor board, the labor policies board, and the United States employment service, all act ing as separate entitles except as unified by the common control exercised by the chief executive. By such means, the industrial ac tivities of all classes of citizens in the allied countries were soon after the 'beginning of the war as completely and it is probable, as efficiently controlled as in that great proto type of state control, Germany herself.
Now that the war is over and peace has come again the question as to whether economic liberalism has been abandoned permanently or only temporarily is the most important one now before the western world. The case and fa cility with which the allied nations transformed themselves into fighting machines, the initia tive and resourcefulness displayed by industrial leaders and working men in conducting to a successful conclusion a war for which they had not directly perpared, furnishes strong if not conclusive evidence that the economic sys tem under which they have been living and prospering in the past possesses merits of such h character that it should not be lightly dis carded in favor of one that has been proven to be provocative of wars and destructive of individual initiative and individual character.