The Reorganisation of Industry Papers, Vol. 3 (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from The Reorganisation of Industry Papers, Vol. 3 An economist is expected, I imagine, to be chiefly interested in the economic aspect of social events, and in the economic wreckage wrought by the war he has a subject to his hand. But I at least wish to say - I will not begin a discussion on these matters without saying - that the economic wreckage now going forward, immense and unprecedented though it be, is to my mind trivial and insignificant in comparison with the human and moral wreckage - the mangled bodies of men, the shattered fabric of ideals - with which it is so fatally accompanied. It is not the business of this Conference to discuss these things, and I do not propose to discuss them. But it is not right that we should come to debate our lesser economic problems without a memory and a word for their terrible setting of blood. The principal topic which I wish to put before you for discussion is the probable after-effect of the war upon the economic, condition of the wage-earning classes in this country. In studying that matter it is well to distinguish two things: what will happen during the process of adjustment when peace conditions are taking the place of war conditions, and what will happen afterwards, when the adjustment has been made and the economic world has once more returned to a comparatively stable state. These two questions are different and can most conveniently be discussed separately. Let us begin with the period of transition. The general nature of the economic change that will take place when peace comes is plain enough. When war broke out in August, 1914, the signal was given for a tremendous transference of all sorts of activity - brain-power, hand-power, machine-power from the ordinary processes of peace to entirely new functions. The community came to need with an urgent and unparalleled intensity, and the need has grown continually ever since, the services of soldiers, sailors, makers of munitions, and many other groups whose work indirectly serves the purposes of war. At the same time, because all intercourse was stopped with one of our most important customers, the normal course of our foreign trade was violently disturbed. As a result of these two influences, but especially, of course, of the first, the distribution of this country's energy among different forms of activity is now altogether different from what it was before the war. We have, an enormous Army and enormous establishments for making munitions. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.