Drawing back to Britain though, there were certain aspects of industry which necessitated government involvement, most noticeably taxation and currency. Because of Britain's lack of any truly profitable governmental industries bar the post office, in the long term a greater burden was placed on the direct revenue raised purely from taxes on income and property. It became evident that the main objective of public financial policy was to keep costs to a minimum and the budget balanced. The other aspect of economic activity which forced government participation was the control of currency which Hobsbawm describes as bringing government much more into the path of business. The popular mode of controlling and stabilising the money market and currency values was through the relatively successful but increasingly short-sighted gold standard method. The gold standard mode though, raised many problems and the system collapsed during the world wide economic slump of the nineteen thirties yet prior to this it had enjoyed surprising amounts of consistent stability and success. Laissez-Faire came under increasing pressure as the nineteenth century progressed and it began to collapse by the 1860's and 1870's due to the fact that other countries were industrialising and free trade alone could not sustain the British economy. Government and industrial relations were therefore forced to restructure and modernise by reinventing its international economic policy. The Great Depression and the resulting economic slump brought home the truth that in an increasingly modernising world the need for government participation in industry was not only advisable but in fact a necessity.…
