America The Not So Golden
The Economic Impact of America: By The Hon. George Peel. (Macmillan. 10s. 6d.)
STUDENTS of the economic conditions of the United States, and more particularly returned travellers, have tended since the war to alternate between an inferiority complex of a rather hopeless kind and a baseless bravado or invincible belief in Britain's star. In both cases they are impressed by some striking fact or contrast, and generalization from a few par- ticular cases or aspects completes the process. The material exists in abundance for a more comprehensive and balanced survey, but it requires a disciplined effort which few are willing to make, and even with those few an imaginative judgment which fewer still possess. It does not matter very much whether Mr. Peel is right or wrong in his exact conclusions. What matters most is that his mode of thinki g and arranging past and present facts towards a genuine broad deduction shall spread and become a fashion. There is little that is re- condite or abstruse, but he has a genius for the selection, from a mass of detail, of really significant pieces of statistics and politics which lead in almost stately sequence to a conclusion. It is not the selection of facts which are required for that conclusion, but the work of one who, having fairly reached a logical end, goes back over the track and simplifies it for his followers. For a book on to-day he seems to start a long way back, in the beginnings of American history, and readers, completing seven out of twelve chapters before getting down to recent times, may think he does a " devil of a lot of packing for a journey he never starts on." As a matter of fact, it is true, when he actually sets forth, that he does not seem to need all the traps he has prepared, but, at any rate, he under- stands the full historical meaning of all that he does use.
Incidentally, the picture of strength and weakness should be of as much interest to the American as to us. The treatment of War Debts and Exports is fresh and judicial. American exports have been essential to world reconstruction, and this must benefit our own export trade far more than the immediate " impact " has hurt us. America has merely taken the place of Germany, and world competition has not much changed in amount, but its direction is different, for it is (on 1913 prices) only about 2 per cent. more for manufactured goods. Our scope for " quality " is greater than ever, and quality forces us over the tariff barrier to an extent little realized. The outcome of his long argument is that " it is not so much the economic strength of the world as the economic weakness of the world, which is our real danger . . . on the whole the exports of the two great peoples perform a common work." Mr. Peel hardly meets with adequate figures or arguments the fact that we have a vast equipment for supply of ordinary goods (coal, steel, cotton and wool) for which others have equipped themselves, or for which the demand is definitely reduced. Our relative obsolescence, or rather surplus, of this equipment and its man power is our special problem of dis- location, that no reliance on quality trade can help us over.
The next bugbear to be reduced to its proper proportions is the American mastery of the mercantile marine and ship- building. The tale of obsolescence and losses is not spared, and our own powers and equipment are properly dressed for favourable lighting. America's unemployment and " small- business " failures are recorded (for what they are worth, as against aggregates which are mighty in spite of them). In dealing with monetary policy the inherent weakness of the system of 28,000 unrelated banks behind the " attractive facade " of the Federal Reserve system is stressed, and an inspiring case made for London as the centre and brain of the world's finance against mere size and mere brawn. Com- parisons of national wealth and income and their growth in the respective countries are not attempted. Mr. Peel's book is a comforting and, be it added, timely record of mitigations of America's prosperity and of Britain's adversity. After all, we feel, the distance between us is not so great. Of works of the " Buck up—you're not dead yet " order this is the very best and sanest. For lucidity and breadth, and freedom from hysterics or hyperbole, it is remarkable. And it contains not a few contributions to economic analysis and insight.
J. C. STAMP.
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