UNEMPLOYMENT—AN OPPORTUNITY
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sia,—May I express appreciation of your article entitled. " Unemployment—An Opportunity " in the Spectator of January 26th ? This article appears to me to indicate very clearly what are the weak spots in the policies being pursued in England towards both unemployment and national development. The following quotation is worth all the emphasis that can be given to it :—
" The very fact of unemployment provides us with a means of large-scale reconstruction and reorganization such as never before existed in our history. At the moment when all individual nations are equipping themselves for the age of electricity, improved com- munications, a higher standard of life generally, we find ourselves with a great reserve of man power engaged in no productive work at all.'
You enumerate the enterprises of development that should be undertaken as including : afforestation, land reclamation; better roads, improved industrial plants, and slum clearance. These are all phases of regional and town-planning which need to be promoted more scientifically and aggressively.
Does not the real trouble lie in the lack of appreciation; on the part of the public, and primarily of too many political " leaders—of the fact that these enterprises may, when carried out in accordance with well-conceived and comprehensive plans, be made sound investments from an economic as well as a social point of -view ? Because I think it is so, I do not
quite agree with your statement that " our foe is poverty." Poverty is the effect rather than the cause of present difficulties.
Wealth is created day by day, according as we harness the forces of science and labour for its making ; or it is dissipated day by day, according as we not only fail to utilize these forces, but spend our resources on maintaining them in an unemployed condition. There is no real irrelevancy between the poverty and death of men who give themselves
to science and of men who are vainly seeking occupation in manual labour. Lack of appreciation of what bOth can do to recreate the wealth lost in the War lies at the root of their " common tragedies.
You strike the keynote of our difficulties when you say in effect that faith in the revival of trade is without a true foundation so long as we have not faith in Ilie'ability of the country to initiate new developments in accord with the changed needs of the times. The latter is what America is doing, not because of greater wealth, but because of a spirit . of faith in the future. Lille her, England needs to plan more for the future and, what is more important, courageously to spend money in putting the plans she has into effect.
The failure to do so is indicated by such incidents as these. New road systems are not being planned with adequate
!onsideration of all the combined needs of traffic and the economic uses of abutting land, which include conservation of natural beauty ; money is being spent far too sparingly,-to do the work well and to yield those returns which would make its spending a good investment. New housing develop- ments have been and are being carried out at great cost, without adequate provision being made for recreation and, other social needs of the communities in these developments. The planning of the metropolitan region of London is pro- ceeding in the kind of piecemeal fashion that has ever failed to do more than tinker with the twin problems of communications and land uses, and the only effort at comprehensive planning is financially supported by the L.C.C. and other authorities with a mere pittance, wholly inadequate to permit of the employ- ment of a sufficient staff for the collection and analysis of necessary data—much less for the making of a regional plan.
Lord Morley, in the introduction to his essay " On Com- promise," said that the most penetrating of all the influences that were impairing the moral and intellectual nerve of England of his generation were, first, increase of material prosperity, and, second, decline in sincerity of spiritual interest. That statement probably reflected the truth, and, if so, we may take heart in the present condition if, along with some loss in prosperity at the moment, we are inspired to face the struggle of building up the future of the nation and the Empire intrepidly and with a sense of its size and amplitude," on the basis of such a policy as you have outlined.—I am, Sir, &e.,
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