The New Age, Vol 30, No 21

NOTES OF THE Week . MUSIC. By H. Rootham . THE SITUATION IN INDIA,VI.-What Should Be THEINSANE-11. By Dr. J. A. Tippet. Done. By Marmaduke Pickthall . VIEWS AND REVIEWS: The Jesuits-II. By OUR GENERATION.By Edward Moore . A. E. R. WE AS CONSUMERS. By Kenneth Richmond . REVIEWS : The New Horizon in Love and Life. Hunger. The Passion of Labour . DRAMA: Peer Gynt. By John Francis Hope . ART: Clive Bell and Modern Art. By R. A. LETTER TO THE EDITORfrom T. M. Colvin . Stephens . PASTICHE. By Ruth Pitter, Alexander Gray . obvious? What else can it be? The truth is still as NOTES OF THE WEEK. far off as ever from the Labour mind that it is not Production that is wrong, but Distribution. Production, IF a strike is a wilful restriction of production, the in the only sense of the word that is worth considering Same must be said of a lock-out; with an added --Production as ability to produce-was never greater emphasis upon the wilfulness of the latter. Moreover, than it is to-day. Capitalism does not hinder the de- in the case of the Engineering Lock-out there is velopment of productivity; science alone would see to abundant evidence that both the time and the excuse that; but, on the contrary, it enormously aids productivity. for it have been deliberately chosen, and with much At this very moment, while half our textile more ingenuity than is usually displayed by Trade spindles are lying idle, textile machinery is being Union leaders when planning, if they ever do, a mere produced at four times the rate of recent years; and we strike. For months the Engineering industry has been should be much surprised to learn that there are no gasping for life in the vain hope of that revival of trade new blast-furnaces being erected even while three- that never comes and that will not come. Of our 300 quarters of those in existence are already idle. The blast-furnaces, sufficient in themselves to produce the staring fact of our present system, indeed, is precisely pig-iron of all Europe, scarcely one in four has keen in the relative over-efficiency of our productive mechanism, use for a whole year. Over of the side by side with the ridiculous under-efficiency of our members of the men’s Union were unemployed at the consumptive arrangements. We can produce for the moment chosen for the lock-out; and upwards of two world; yet we have to consume as if we were pauper millions has been paid out by the Union in out-of-work savages. The “Labour Monthly” is certainly barking benefit. In this moribund condition of the industry, up the wrong tree (as usual) in calling attention to it is little wonder that the Employers thought it a Productivity as the defect of Capitalism. The defect, matter of comparative indifference whether production it-e repeat, is not Production, but Distribution, and continued or ceased altogether. Some new or ancient hence the remedy is not to be found in organising privilege might be wrung from the men under the production or in demanding workers’ control over threat or fact of a lock-out ; and at least that advantage management or in any of the thousand and one was to be expected from the complete cessation of all nostrums that have hitherto done duty for thought. The pretence of production. That there is extant an remedy, on the contrary, is to be found in employing infinitely better way of dealing with the situation neither the national real credit to bring about what it exists to the Employers nor the Men have, it appears, the bring about, namely, delivery of the goods to those who remotestidea. Both alike prefer to continue in a struggle need them; and the mechanism for this purpose is the of alternate murder and suicide as the line of least simple, harmless mechanism of price-regulation. Price- resistance in the absence of any attempt to think about regulation scientifically applied would instantly remove Finance. And murder and suicide their policy practically all our present economic difficulties. From undoubtedly is, since the simplest arithmetic will plainly the moment that the Douglas ratio came into operation, demonstrate that lock-out or strike has a single effect the wheels of industry would begin to spin rapidly on the industry as a whole, namely, the depreciation of again ; and everybody would at once feel the benefit of its real credit or ability to deliver goods. What hope it. But, unfortunately, what is everybody’s advantage can be entertained by either party or by the community is nobody’s business; and thus the “Labour Monthly,” at large that any good can come of such stupid disputes Mr. G. D. H. Cole leading, can continue its excellent passes sane comprehension. Both sides and the services in the cause of successive disasters culminating, communityas well deserve to suffer for it almost as much as they will, in social catastrophe. as they will. *** *** Mr. Stanley Baldwin has once more been scanning The “Labour Monthly,” Mr. G. D. H. Cole sagely the horizon for signs of the often announced revival in leading-, has the usual ray of darkness to cast upon a trade. He thinks that, so far as prices go, we are now well-lit situation. After enumerating such facts as we at the bottom. That has been said so often that it have just mentioned, the “Labour Monthly” may not be any truer now than on former occasions. profoundlyconcludes that Capitalism which was once the But, even if it be, Mr. Baldwin admits that we are friend is now the enemy of Production. Is it not at present only “dragging along the bottom,” and that “how long that process will last it is impossible to say. ” sympatheticimagination? And how simple is the remedy? It “It may be some months yet,” he affirms, “before we needs but the underpinning of the industrial fabric by see anything that can be called a revival.” Why not the Just Price. This would, on the one hand, assure some years? He went on to indulge in the customary the employer good trade at a reasonable rate of profit. wisdom of our experts on the subject of wage-reductions, On the other, it would enable a standard rate of wages and dropped the ominous hint that “there are and length of hours (since the latter is a question of still some important industries where considerable labour cost) to be thrown into costs, and lodged securely cessions, somehow or another, will have to be made.” beyond the ravages of the economic cyclones and anti- He drew a strong distinction between distributing cyclones to which any standard is now helplessly businesses, wholesale and retail, and productive industry. exposed. Further, in the real value of his wages the ’The former, he said, were not doing so badly. He worker would reap the full benefit of his skill and declared himself amazed to see how much shopping is efficiency. One would have thought that the most going on in London. He attributed this to a despair obvious considerations of their true interest would have of saving on the part of the ordinary man and an impelled both sides at least to examine this solution. impatience to translate his money in to concrete terms *** before it was seized by an insatiable Chancellor of the The hollowness of the “trade balance“ test of Exchequer. If so, the pressure of taxation may have national prosperity is unanswerably exposed by the a good effect after all, though it is certainly not one latest figures. For the month of February there is a intended by the Treasury. Mr. Baldwin seemed, in this “favourable balance”--an excess, that is, of exports passage of his speech, to betray some dim gIimmering over imports (including movements of bullion and of the truth that it is by spending that the nation lives. specie)--of Prima facie, on the orthodox Rut it was in his treatment of the producing trades that presuppositions, this is a magnificent economic success, he revealed the radical distortion of his outlook. He and an evidence of the soundness of the country’s spoke of’ these as though their dominant, and almost credit. But then the curious fact emerges that this sole, function is to “export their goods and find food achievement of an excess of exports is actually and raw material for the country. ” Incidentally, of accompaniedby a fall, as compared with the previous month, course, they have to do this, though not necessarily of nearly in the value of goods exported. (particularly as regards food) in anything like the That is to say, the “favourable balance” does not mean wholesale measure that now ob contains. Rut if our any positive achievement at all, but only a very marked manufactureof such things as textiles, boots, hardware, falling off in imports. We have then to bear in mind cutlery, pottery, and furniture is not intended primarily that the raw materials of most of our industries and the to supply the needs of our own people, we must be mad. bulk of our food supplies come from abroad, that a Naturally Mr. Baldwin was much perturbed by the nation lives by acquiring (whether by direct production tariff walls that have been rising everywhere since the or exchange) the goods it needs, and that our war. If the home markets were planted firmly in the people are at present going scandalously short of goods foreground of the picture, there would be no difficulty of all kinds.

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