May 2 America, the land of prosperity, is suffering from depression. This is 4 somewhat new" perience for the land of buoyant hopes and those concerned are examining the phenomenon with considerable anxiety, There are said to be no less than 4,000,000 unemployed in the United States and that is many more,.in proportion to the population, than 800,000 in Great Britain, Not Jong ago American business men would have said that what was wrong with the "old country" was a lack of hustle and efficiency. If we only hustled more and applied the methods of the new psychology to our unemployed problem, it would have been solved over night. But America's trouble is not lack of efficiency; us a matter of fact she is suffering from efficient itis, The ery was produce and still produce, speed and more speed until production has overtaken the country's capacity to absorb and America "finds herself with an oversold and over-stocked market. Mr. J. J. Davis, American Secretary of Labour, says "You can make all the boots and shoes needed annually in America in six months. You can dig all the coal needed in year, with the men now employed in the industry, in six months, Because of the increase in population in the last ten years it now should take 140° men to supply the needs of the country where, before. it took 100, Instead of that, and in spite of our having 20,000,000 more people, the needs of the country are fully met with seven per cent. fewer workers than we had in 1917." The development of mechanization has enabled fewer men to turn out more manufactured articles than was the case ten years ago, It is true that. increased efficiency of production caused the price of commodities to he reduced, but the cost of marketing increased, owing to the high cost of living, to such extent that it more than counter-balanced the reduction in cost of manufacture, There was, therefore, little or no reduction in the price of the goods to the consumer and, consequently, there was no considerable increase in the number of purchasers. There is not likely to be any immediate increased demand for goods in America for a large proportion of the purchases in recent years has been made on the instalment system so that the credit of the buyers is already mortgaged. The Commissioner of Labour Statistics sayy, "Every: machine that is built to do the work of four men throws three out of work." If this be so, the chances seem to be that the number of unemployed will rather than decrease appear promising markets, for the great producing nation of the West and. peace in these countries is a necessity if they are to absorb, to any great extent, the surplus products of American factories. But even an enlarged trade with the Far East has certain concomitant relations that make this solution less easy than, at the first blush, it, seems, A' nation that purchases goods from another must pay for its purchases with goods of its own. Exports must balance imports or the trade will come to an impasse. The exports which the East can send to America are limited in quantity, for America is, herself, rich in raw material. Silk, tea and lacquer the staples of the East and even these have to surmount a high tariff before they can reach the destined market. Silver and gold are not wealth and, if they were, America has no lack of these metals. The East needs machinery, electrical apparatus, railway equipment. These are expensive items and before China or India could afford to purchase them in large quanti ties they would require an enlarged overseas trade of their own in order to make the fnancial adjustment possible, America's problem ly really 9 world problem, Granted that the difficulty may be overcome and the East provide the field that the manufacturing nations of the world need to absorb their surplus goods. The East docs not intend to go on indefinitely purchasing machinery from the West, The machinery is purchased to the end that the East may do its own manufacturing fand have no further need of the products of the West, What is to happen when the East has become as efficient as the West and has replaced her present slow man-power methods with labour-saving machinery? When this machinery has produced so much that "her people are saturated with the goods they need, as the American people Seem now to be satitrated, what are we going to do with all the super-efficient machines that will be then in existence? 'The process of taking in each others washing must stop some day and thet, what? These speculations lead' nowhere because we have not the ability to foresee the conditions that will exist when these things happen and in any ease we will leave to the people of that day to handle their own problems. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.