Up 'Against It
Contemporaneously with the flowers of spring a new set of posters blooms on the hoardings. Another production drive has begun, and its beginning revives the question why all the other ones failed. It was not for want-of exhortation, and this time the President of the Board of Trade has been careful to point out that exhortation is not the idea at all. In the now ubiquitous phrases " We're up against it " and " We work—or want " there appears a faint echo of the old " Blood, sweat, toil and tears," but without falling bombs and rising new factories to give it point. The trouble is that our difficulties are economic, and so long as economic difficulties are put in general terms they are not interesting to the masses. They only become interesting when they strike home to the individual either through some catastrophe, like a slump which nobody can ignore, or through a direct and local appeal—parish pump economics. To the extent that the new campaign aims at bringing home the facts to the people it is aiming at the right spot and must be given every support. But once again the appeal must not be general but particular. It must begin not at the top with posters and films, but at the bottom with facts restricted to what is immediately relevant. The Economic Survey for 1947 served its purpose, but the purpose of getting the attention of the individual factory worker is best served by a notice on the gate of his own factory setting out, say, what that factory's coal consumption was before the war, what its allocation is now, and when it will go on short time if supplies do not improve. From such a point the realistic discussion of production can begin. It will not solve the coal shortage tomorrow, but it may turn attention in the right direction and it may raise some doubts about the wisdom of introducing the five-day week in the mines next month. The facts must seep into every corner of the economy, and before that some pretty big dams must be broken at the centre. Now that the Govern- ment is setting out to give the facts it must be quite sure that it has all the facts it wants and is willing to disclose them in detail.
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