CURRENT LITERATURE
BARTER: A STUDY IN THE ECONOMICS OF THE SMALLER GROUP By J. W. Scott
" Anything has its justification which provokes thought," says Professor Scott in his preface. On such grounds his little booklet (Distributist League, is.) is—for the general reader at least— amply justified. He describes, pleads for, and draws analogies from the Home- croft experiment with a vividness of language a humanity and an open- mindedness which are refreshing and stimulating. Not that he will find many economists to accept his wider conclu- sions. THis major assiunption, viz., that technical progress means decreasing wage employment, demanding Home- crofting as a permanent supplement to economic life, is refutable. He glosses over the difference, in efforts and results, between the labour of the homecrofter and that of the industrial wage-earner. His Back-to-the-Land mysticism—that almost Freudian nostalgia for Mother Earth — is a questionable element. Finally, one could say much about his closing plea for independent national paper currencies. Unfortunately there is not room to say it here ; but one can refer Professor Scott and his readers to Professor von Hayek's Monetary Nationalism and Economic Stability, recently reviewed in these columns. But if Professor Scott puts more on the Homecrofting idea than it can carry, the idea remains a good one, attractively presented and worth attention.
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