Lessons of the Slump The annual report of Mr. Harold
Butler, Director of the International Labour Office at Geneva, is largely devoted to a survey of recovery in various countries, and to an attack on the " unmitigated waste " of armaments ; some of its most interesting sections, however, are concerned with the lessons which, Mr. Butler thinks, have been learned from the last slump. The return to prosperity has shown that depression was not to be cured by wage-cutting ; and that public works and expenditure on relief in a slump are not mere waste but useful weapons against unemployment. Above all, Mr. Butler thinks, the slump has increased our knowledge of currency technique, and the recent agreement between France, Great Britain and America is in part an attempt to use that knowledge. Above all, " in one country after another," the revival of industry has been seen to correspond, not with cuts in wages or costs, nor with " a deterioration in working conditions," but with the abandon- ment of deflation and the adoption of monetary expansion. If it were certain that Governments had learned these lessons, the future would indeed be brighter.
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