Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Annals, Vol. 59
Here we stand with reasonable possibilities of 300 or 400 per cent increase in national wealth but we are now not even fully using our equipment at the low efficiencies that we at present tolerate. The article by Mr. Reitzel on page 125 reveals the shocking unem ployment of a normal year like 1912. We have in our midst the final lunacy of the ages - an industrial depression - unused resources, piles of raw materials lying inert, rows of fully equipped factories with their machines standing silent and idle, thousands of men and women hungry, poor, half naked, clamoring merely for the chance to work and at rates that are grossly inadequate (see Nearing, page That is the stud that changes are made oi - unwise changes perhaps. To those who can read, there is a hand writing on the wall.
I am not blaming anyone for all this. As nearly as I can dis cern there is not very much blame to be dispensed. It has just happened. The facts are that we have made industrial changes faster than we could adjust them, we have made them so fast that civilization has an awful stomachache from undigested improve ments. The alarming fact is that when a pain passes a certain point a person will take anything that is offered.
That world paralysis, the industrial depression, should, so long as it remains upon the earth, produce a sense of disgrace in every economist, every legislator and every captain of industry. What causes the depression? I confess to shame. I should be greatly humiliated if the man from the moon asked me about it.
Dr. Patterson's paper (see page 133) gives a very valuable sum mary of leading theories for the cause of financial depression. Our great ignorance of this subject is shown by this variance of our notions, a variance which serves forcibly to illustrate the gravity of the problem.
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