The Inability of Some Countries to Understand the Economic Recovery Made Since 1931
FIND in some people in Canad: a and in many more in the United States, a confirmed inability to understand the economic recovery which has been in progress in England since the end of 1931.
It arises, perhaps, in the first case, from a sort of belief ingrained in the past, that England was such an old country she never could "come back."
There seems to be an idea in North America that the only sort of future is for those countries that have unlimited, unworked natural resources, and that the only sort of recovery is that which comes from the exploitation and spoliation of such resources; the method by which, generally speaking, the success of the entire American continent, prior to the "Coolidge prosperity", was achieved, says Harold Fisher in "Canada Business."
The countries of Europe, in general, are, proportionately to their areas, no richer in natural resources than England, yet they contrive to support huge populations much denser than those of North America, and if, at the present time, they are in considerable trouble, the cause is exactly the same fundamentally as that in America, nomely, over-indebtedness, The turn for the- better in England has been so pronounced, however, that it could not be denied; it had, therefore, to be explained, explained away if possible, but at any rate, explained. The first lexplanation was the building boom. It was said that the improvement in England was entirely due to the big rise im building. that this was a tempora &ry phenomenon and when the building boom was over, the depression would return. Any slackening of the pace in the annual increase of building was, therefore, seized on by the croakers as evidence of impending doom.
Because the irate of increase in total building plans for 1036 over 1935 was less than that of 1935 over 1934, it was regarded by pessimists as a bad sign. It was a mere nothing to them that the total building plans for 1936 were nearly double those of 1931,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.