Feb. 20.
It is a commonplace amon moralists that every invention, every convenience devised for man's use, exacts its full pat ment. "To what end," cries Mr. Herbert in "The New Republic," of you give us a whole rtsickness?" Even the undoubted blessings of hygienic knowledge have to be for in more mouths to feed and longer time during wiiieh they must be fed. operation of this How the wei upon the w shown in February "Nineteenth Century." The writer of the first has been doing relief work among the Welsh miners and he emphasizes that the real problem is not the present but the future, The coal mines cannot be considered apart from industrial con tions generally, not only in Britain but abroad, If Britain could reopen all her mine: ing nations, one of those nations has its to. show slightest encouragem problem is merely shifted to another part ut the civilized world, Economists say that labour-saving machinery does not really create unemployment, it only Your more productive. But unless consumption can be proportionately increased, dyes not pay to rin the machiner ad eiaployment declines, The problem is, in Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonnington's phrase, to "stimulate the phagocytes: and that is precisely the problem: we have not begun to solve. Behind the Rhondda miner, and very close behind him, we seo certain state of industrial satur ation," and to this we must attribute our unemployment, including that of the miner." A partial reniedy is to raise the school age, thus both delaying the incursion of fresh streams of Jabour-seekers and equipping them better for their search.
But this merely: puts off the evil day for a few years, unless the demand for the produce of all labour and labour-saving machinery can be increased to cope with the supply.
The second article in the netwenth Century," di with American industria shows how demand is being artificially stimulated to meet the sapply due to massed production, a phase of modern industry in which Ameri leads the world. The art of lesmanship has been cultivated to a high degree, In 1850, four-fifths of the adult" workin population were making things aul only a fifth were selling, ions were number of ily to increase, provides courses of lectures on salesmanship, book by two American vives a "vivid and scathing" picture of the "smart young contact" men," who at social functions turn jun casually to some brand of the "closing men" who follow hard upon their heels; of the "sucker lists" people who, suffering from certain 's, are probable purchasers of ain remedies, or being rey, have children, of need furniture, cradles or coffins. Frenzied efforts to make men tower conscious," refrigerator have produced a new and rapidly.
i s¥slem of ce-operative oF publicity which is. growing, highly" effective.
To the imperative need of fore ing consumption is due also the growth of the system of installment buying, which is no doubt safe enough in times of pra sperity—at least we read that bad debts on this count remarkably small—but at any sign of crisis might produce disastrous results. And then we read that" obsolescence' rapidly becoming the most effective instrument of the American salesman." Customers are persvaded to buy, say, a 1929 ear be-tore they have finished paying for 1928 model, which is probably perfectly yood and in no essential different fom its successor.
By means of the smallest possible superficial change the very newest pushed upon the public, this procedure been carried the case of motors that ears in ood condition ar frequently: dum Jed" upon building sites, broken dug into the foundations of new Saildings.
One other serious aspect of sbout-saving machinery is not ed, namely, that it tends to me crease the number of unskilled workers. A man trained to make bouts by hand cannot quickly learn to make, say, hats, But having learnt to tend one labour-ving machine, he las little difficulty in learning to ook falter another, Of course this makes him easily transferable from industry to another But a great mass of unskilled, skilled, y for the teenth Century" overlook, or at least do not mention, two high important factors in the world's industrial saturation," namely, we largest countries, are at present practically useless their neighbours. Russia eon tinues to labour under the most ntastic government that ever tried to defy natural laws and ruined their countrymen doing so, China, after being wasted by years of misgovern ment and civil war, staggers under iniquitous taxation and the tyranny of a clique of visionaries, or worse, who are rapidly destroying both her export trade and powers of consumption, I seems probable that China's destiny should be to sell agricul tural and kindred products, the output of all of which might be enormously increased by scien tific. methods} "her mineral _resources are commonly overrated, Russia, we read, contains almost leverytiting that mankind requires and ought to be one of the world's granaries, With so much to offer, both countries ought to be able to take largely in exchange, but there is as yet little or no sign of their doing so, and the effect on the world's business is proportionately great, alluving speculation is the possible resuscitation of individual manufacture and self-sufficing village, or small town communities. Before the war, they may be there still, one could point to many such on the Continent of europe, Little towns which pro-luced in themselves and from the countryside at least large proportion of all needs. To recover 1 condition of affairs means necesily and simpler naval revision titude The history of mankind, ver, dives not suyeest that this is either impossible or even improbable,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.