IDEAL OF SECURITY

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 208, 30 May 1936, Page 6

IDEAL OF SECURITY

A Professor’s Criticism Tile contention that excessive insistence on security makes for insecurity is held by Professor J. H. Jones, a well-known economist, in an article on World trends which appeared in "The Accountant,” London. "The fact with which we have to reckon,” he said, “is that the world is now being guided by this desire fur security and that it believes security to be obtainable only by diversification of industries within the country and a restriction of international trade within the narrowest possible limits. Just as we have made up our minds to breed more pigs and grow more tomatoes, so other countries have made up their minds to build more ships, to weave more cotton, to produce, where they can, their own coal, to establish their own rayon industries, and so on. "W e are often told that we live in a mad world. We are certainly living in a panic-stricken world in which oldtime economic considerations are being swept aside in the search for that wiil-o'-the-wisp which is called security. I sometimes meet youngsters, 18 or 20 years of age, who choose this or that profession because it offers security of tenuse with a pension on retirement. The feeling of insecurity and the desire for security seems to have gripped the whole world. When a youth allows his career to be shaped by the prospect of a pension there seems to be something radically wrong about his attitude toward life and the world around him; yet he seems to be symbolic of the age. The world is young, very young—young enough to outgrow this madness. "I have been told that about two years ago, when the depression wa* at its worst, many a Canadian farmer gave up his farm, with its niodeVn and expensive equipment, built a wooden hut for himself on the bank of a stream at the edge of a wood, and spent his time hunting, fishing, lumbering and growing his own food. He wanted security. Robinson Crusoe lived in that way, but when his ship clothes were done he was clad in sk'ns; when the birds were shy and the fish would not < bite he went hungry—there was no unemployment insurance. When Friday came he was glad of his companionship. When the ship that rescued him hove in sight his heart leapt for joy. The Canadian farmer will return to bis reaper. The day will yet come when I. or my successor, will be able to buy an imported article without being accused of depriving a British worker of a job. Then we shall have achieved a greater security.”