THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PRICE STABILISATION 
AND CO-OPERATION IN PRODUCTION 
CHaNGEs have taken place so rapidly since the conclusion of the war in the 
organisation and control of industry that the doctrines enunciated with every 
mark of conviction by economists and statesmen even a decade ago are beginning 
to appear old-fashioned and highly fallacious. Certain basic principles remain 
unaffected, since they lie at the very roots of economic and industrial progress, 
but it would be dangerous in the extreme to regard all theories and all doctrines 
as unaffected by time and by the growth of human invention, and to apply 
arbitrarily a given set of rules from the copy-books to certain developments, and, 
because the rules do not fit, condemn the latter at once. 
In no case has tradition been more active than in the criticism of what are 
popularly known ag rings ” or “ trusts ”, and the electrical industry of Britain 
has been subjected to hostile examination on more than one occasion by author- 
ities who had in view certain legendary functions and legendary abuses, which 
belonged properly to the dawn and not to the full daylight of industria] progress. 
It is now time that knowledge should take the place of prejudice, and straight 
criticism, based on clear perception of fundamentals, be substituted for the 
vague emanations of the text-books of a past century. One cannot apply 
any fixed doctrines or conceptions to the study of something which is continually 
changing, or label with a catchword culled from newspaper articles or demagogic 
speeches the organisation or organisations under which a great industry has 
perfected its capacity to resist foreign competition and maintain in profitable 
activity its army of workers. In the same way, one cannot answer vague criticism 
by equally vague denial, and state, in the last resort, that only dire necessity has 
forced closer organisation on industry, without defining the reality of such 
necessity and the forms it has imposed. 
In the belief, therefore, that an objective description of what has actually 
taken place in the organisation of the electrical industry in the main countries 
competing with us in the home and foreign markets would do more to show the 
real position than any measure of special pleading, we have undertaken this 
investigation and laid open the main principles which have governed develop- 
ments since the conclusion of the war. The general economic background is 
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