All this is definitely encouraging for the future. It means, on the face of it, that there is no obstacle io a further very considerable increase in the standard of life. It means equally that the nation will be able to afford an intensification of the rearmament programme without any great reduction in the standard of life. But this is not quite the whole of the truth. We have seen that the factory worker represents only one-quarter of the occupied population. Thus, if industrial productivity rises by 23 per cent. per annum, the national income will rise by only 0.6 per cent. per annum, unless there is an increase of productivity in the other departments of the national life. In the non-factory trades, according to this memorandum, there is apparently some similar increase of productivity in progress. But something like two-thirds of the working population are not employed in industry at all. It is highly necessary, therefore, that there should be an increase in productivity in agriculture, transport, distribution, building, and services. The industrial system of this country is expanding fast, and is turning out masses of goods in an increasingly economic way. But the benefit to the community as a whole will be lost unless there is a comparable increase of productivity in the non-industrial part of the national life. The Government, indeed, might well turn its attention away from industry, and direct it towards those sections of the national economy in which there is still great scope for an increase in efficiency, of $12,963,000 from which the amount of $3,963,000 owing on current account as of December 31, 1937 by the International Telephone and' Telegraph Corporation was deducted and the balance of $9,000,000 was received in cash.
During July, 1938 the Corporation sold in London an amount of £400,- 000 per value of its holding of £1,785,000 of 5% per cent. Preference stock of the United River Plate Telephone Company, Limited and during August, 1998 sold in Buenos Aires, an amount of Argentine pesos 2275000 principal amount of its holdings of Argentine pesos 5,000,000 of Twenty-Five Year Floating Charge Debenture Bonds of the United River Plate Telephone Company, Limited.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.