widely voiced demand for conscious planning in the business world so as to rescue it from anarchy.
Everywhere among thoughtful men the issue is that of economic government or anarchy. Though statesmen may try to shed their responsibility by treating the situation as a natural phenomenon, advising us to 'wait for the turn of the tide,' or 'for the sun to break through the clouds,' reasonable men and women in growing numbers hold that trade, industry, and finance are branches of human conduct, individual and collective, and that man's reasonable will should and can regulate this conduct. In other words, while natural phenomena, such as drought and pestilence, may and do affect the productivity of certain countries, they are of diminishing importance, owing to closer world communications and improved storage, and can shed no light upon the current situation with its excessive productivity. Quite evidently it is not nature but man that is to blame for the welter of unsaleable goods and the waste of unused capital and labour that attest the collapse of our 'economic system.'
The demand for rational order has first taken shape in a new attitude towards combines, cartels, and other trade organisations. Formerly it was only the business unit that was subject to a rational economy, each part or process being adjusted to the needs and utility of the business as a whole. Now this 'rationalisation' is being extended to national or even international industries as organic wholes. But the order or economy which such rationalisation seeks
