WAYS AND MEANS
The Finance of British Government, 1920-1936. By Ursula K. Hicks. (Oxford University Press. iss.)
INTEREST in the subject of public finance has increased, since the War, both among economists and among the general public. The reasons are obvious. The burden of taxation is heavier; and one looks more carefully at a major pest than at a minor nuisance. The social conscience is more sensitive, and its satisfaction, at any level, costs money; hence a new angle of interest. A larger proportion of economic activity is com- munally undertaken, communally controlled, or in some way communally assisted; and each addition to the field of public or semi-public enterprise carries its own budgetary problems, whether the venture be self-financing or not. The devastating swing of the trade cycle, superimposed upon Great Britain's post-War difficulties, has stimulated attention to the possi- bilities of compensating budget manipulation. Finally, the prospect of a new and heavy burden of armament finance has made the whole question highly topical.
Mrs. Hicks' book is, of course, anything but a light topical essay. It is a serious, almost encyclopaedic, and decidedly stiff full-length study, combining a historical survey, a descrip- tion of the mechanics of national finance from the point of view both of expenditure and of receipts, a good deal of prac- tical economic and administrative criticism, and a discussion of the theoretical principles involved. The author allows herself a wide range. Not only central but local finance comes within her scope, though she reluctantly refrains, on the ground of their autonomy and diversity, from discussing local financial policies in detail. There are excursions into general social policy, including a severe judgement on the Govern- ment's activities—or inactivity—in the Special Areas, and a discussion, from the technical aspect, of the problem of the roads.. These latter divergences, however, occupy a relatively small part of the book, whose subject matter—apart from the brief introductory survey—falls under three main heads. First comes Expenditure, comprising social expenditure, general and particular measures in aid of industry, public investment in all its aspects, grants in aid (discussed here in conjunction with rates and the relation of central and local government) and the relief, direct and indirect, of unemployment. Then follows
Taxation, with a description of the tax structure, discussions on the immediate and long-run effects of its various com. ponents both on production and on the distribution of incomes, an analysis of the national accounts and the process of budget. balancing, and an examination of tax policy in the trade cycle. Last comes a section on Monetary Policy and the Debt, which reverts to the historical method of the Introduction and traces its subject through the short boom and depression of the early twenties, the strain of the gold-standard years, the crisis of 1931 and the easy-money period marked by the great con- version of 1932. The whole is plentifully illustrated by charts and statistics.
The labour involved in such a book as this is enormous, and the value of the result undoubted. There is no comparable work covering the post-War period—indeed one may say that there is no comparable work at all, since earlier authorities dealt neither with the same problems nor with the same theoretical apparatus. Mrs. Hicks' book, in fact, becomes at once a standard authority. Its shortcomings are the more regrettable. The arrangement as summarised above seems logical enough, but within its broad headings theory, descrip- tion, history, and obiter dicta on this and that mingle in an infuriating jumble. Distinction of style is not, for some reason, generally to be expected among economists, and one cannot bear too hardly on its absence in a work dealing with so intractable a subject-matter. But one's eye and ear recoil, and one's mental processes stumble, at the Jungle English and Ribbon Writing which clog too many of its pages. Quite apart from aesthetic considerations it is irritating, when there are so many difficulties intrinsic to the subject-matter, to waste minutes unravelling the convolutions of a cryptic and ambiguous sentence only to discover a perfectly straightforward meaning capable of perfectly straightforward expression. Where the work itself is of no particular value this need not matter; no one need read it. But Mrs. Hicks' book deserves to be read, needs to be read, and no doubt will be read, by all serious students of public finance and of post-War economic history in general. She has ensured for herself a truly impressive fund of respect, gratitude, and irritation.
HONOR CROOME.
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