POST-WAR EMPLOYMENT
Sm,—We cannot escape from regarding " The Industrial Choice," the subject of Professor Pigou's interesting article, as secondary. The outrage, not only to our feelings, but to our claim to be intelligent, has been the prevalence in England during the past twenty years of unemploy- meat and under-employment and insecurity of employment. Our first
target must be to establish customary practices within which no willing worker will be compelled to idle. At a later stage, market tendencies will help us to see whether allocation of effort to this or that task can be altered with advantage.
If we are well equipped for peace, we are a long way towards being well equipped for war. Agriculturists tell us that heavy cereal cropping exhausts the soil, and that the best agents for its restoration and improve- ment are heavy animals and broad-leaved plants: together with such ancillary services as forestry, drainage, attention to buildings, and so on. The idea can be generalised beyond agriculture to other industries: what we want is capacity for rapid expansion of our production of food and munitions ; we will not always want a large day to day production of such things. Reserves can be stored, preferably inland: larger or smaller as external politics dictate. But storage capacity is useful in either case. To that extent preparedness for •war dovetails with con- sumers' interest. Both doctrines ask a maximum movement of ships, and a minimum movement of guns and butter.
" Over-production " is a phrase frequently met (as if there could be such a thing) when the reality is some failure of transport and dis- tribution. The most startling thing in commerce is the continuously accelerating (".logarithmic ") growth of the gap between what the pro- ducer gets for anything, and what the consumer pays for it. This gap is caused, quite obviously, by the choking of the channels of transport.
especially those channels (waterways, railways) on which things move which are widely and keenly wanted, which for that reason must be moved in large weights and quantities. When labour can be spared from production, and from fighting, good rewards can be harvested from improvements to traffic facilities on water and on rail.—I am, Sir, yours
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