INTERNAL UNREST.
And if it is true that international confidence and international trade are hampered by unsettlement and unrest, it is equally true that so far as this country is concerned unrest and unsettlement in all that pertains to relations between Capital and Labour, and to some extent between class and class, are proving a most serious bar to progress. Labour distrusts Capital and the employer. Capital is ineffective because the main essentials for enterprise are lacking. As a result of these conditions output is curtailed and prices are maintained at a level which causes the consumer to hold back either through inability to purchase or because he believes prices will be lower. Meanwhile foreign competition grows apace, and there is fear lest in any moderate inter- national trade revival we may not get our fair share ; and because of these same conditions of unsettlement the trader or manufacturer who under different conditions might strive—and strive legitimately--to make a fortune on the principle of small individual profits compensated for by a big turnover is precluded from the experiment because a small rise in labour demands or a threatened strike might involve instant ruin. Yet all the time his success would mean benefit, not merely to himself, but to the greater number of men employed and also to the consumer.
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