No one, surely, can examine the record of the coal industry either in England or in America and say that the motives which underlie its ownership by private interest are compatible with the view that an uninterrupted service to the community has been the first object of the owners.
He critiques the private ownership of the coal industry, arguing it conflicts with the community's need for uninterrupted service.
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More from Harold J. Laski
From no accusation were its statesmen more anxious to be free than from that of a belief in democratic government.
How could it seek security where it defied the desires of the vast majority of its subjects?
But we cannot understand the eighteenth century, or its theories, unless we realize that its temper was still dominantly aristocratic.
The revolutionary spirit, in fact, was as much the product of the past as the very institutions it came to condemn.
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