Mr. A. S. Comyns Carr, in Escape from the Dole
(The Crite- rion Miscellany : Faber and Faber, ls.) offers us an old remedy in a new form. He suggests that the money now spent on subsidizing unemployment would be better employed in subsidizing employment. This would be done by means of a guarantee amounting to not more than the " dole " that would otherwise have been paid, tc any firm of the loss incurred by working full time either on a specific contract or during a specific period. It is a tempting theory, especially if one takes seriously the imaginary examples supplied, but there are several objections. In the first place the safeguards proposed by Mr. Comyns Carr are inadequate to protect the system against fraud. Secondly, it would obviously benefit less efficient firms more than efficient ones, a disastrous policy which no amount of inspection could cure, since the only test of efficiency is in unassisted sales. Thirdly, it provides no market for the product of all this increased activity, except by the relatively small expansion of incomes in this country. Thus, it does not take account of the most serious element in the situation, the excess of world productive capacity over world demand. The most valuable parts of this pamphlet arc the author's criticisms of various elements in our present system, but these are mainly destructive.
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