PREFACE
All business men and economists admit that there are grave defects in the present working of our economic system. But they differ widely in their diagnosis. Many regard the present trouble as only a larger, more intense and widespread example of those trade depressions which recur periodically, natural and necessary fluctuations in the tide of industry. Important war and post-war disturbances in production, markets, finance, have made this depression worse and more wasteful than others—that is all. Others, however, find a unique economic character in this depression. Some trace this uniqueness to the rapid pace and unpredictable direction of recent advances in the technique of power-driven machinery and the organisation of production and markets, displacing obsolete methods and 'economising' labour. Unemployment they regard as an inevitable cost of economic progress. Others find the uniqueness in an insufficiency and a maldistribution of gold and of purchasing power which by its effect on prices has crippled the activity of business men and loaded industry with increased indebtedness to the 'rentier' class.
That these causes aggravate the situation it is not my intention to deny. But the prominence afforded to them helps to screen the great fundamental source of trouble, the lack of any conscious equitable government of industry. While the closest application of
