Letters to the Editor
• AN AMERICAN'S VIEW OF THE • UNEMPLOYMENT SITUATION [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,--R is no doubt true that unemployment will eventually be eliminated by the absorption of the unemployed into those industries that happen to be relatively prosperous. But this process of readjustment is slow. Whether the more fortunate captains of industry are fearful of overproducing, or whether they are slow to expand their output because of the prevailing atmosphere of business uncertainty is a debatable question. The fact remains that hundreds of thousands of able-bodied men want work and cannot get it, and as a consequence their children—the England of the future—are frequently under- nourished, while in many instances the men themselves have suffered a serious decline in morale.
To one who lives in the busy state of Pennsylvania the un- employment situation in the British Isles appears like nothing less than a national emergency. It is very different from the trough of an ordinary business cycle. While ordinarily the State should keep out, in the present case it would seem that only courageous and constructive action on the part of the Government can prevent unemployment from dragging out for several years more.
An elaborate programme of public works may look like a dangerous departure from traditions of individualism. But something must certainly be done, and in the long months and perhaps years that it will probably require for private enter- prise so to readjust itself as to bring employment back to normal, it seems ridiculous not to tide over the gap by furnishing a substantial fraction of the unemployed with work on housing projects, schools, roads and other appropriate public improvements.
There are many public improvements that can be profitably undertaken in sections where the industries are not so per- manently depressed as to make emigration the best policy. Doubtless they will be carried through in the future, if not at present. I take it that no well-informed person thinks England will never be able to afford the better houses, better roads, and better schools on whose construction the unem- ployed could now be appropriately engaged.
I hope I have not seemed to make too light of the problem. We in the United States have done nothing along this line. England practically led the way in providing her people with a great scheme of insurance, designed primarily to meet the major slumps of the ordinary trade cycle. Will she again take the lead in social reform, this time by adopting a pro- gramme of public works which will inevitably accelerate the recovery of her industries from the most extraordinary depres- sion of modern history Y—I am, Sir, &c.,
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