CORRESPONDENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 105, 30 October 1935, Page 10

CORRESPONDENCE

LAND AND EMPLOYMENT

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—l thank Mr. R. A. Gosse for his I courteous reply to my letter. • Henry { George died about 40 years ago, and nothing he wrote ten years before that can throw any light upon the cause oi unemployment throughout the! world today. Mr. Gosse claims that most economists of repute now concede land I speculation and inflated land values as} the basic cause of unemployment. I challenged that statement, and have since found that in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, where a dozen or more of the suggested causes of unemployment are impartially discussed by an eminent economist with spec.ial reference to the present times, land speculation is not even mentioned. The only citations to which Mr. Gosse refers are from Professors Murphy and Condliffe. The statement quoted from Professor Murphy has no more reference to unemployment than the first chapter of Genesis. The quotation from Professor Condliffe does refer to unemployment, but says in very terms that land "has not been adequately worked for lack of capital," thus reinforcing my argument that we are dealing with a doubleheaded problem—idle men and idle money. ■ Speculation in land is not "toe basic cause of unemployment." Except in so far as all ■ economic phenomena are inter-related, it is not even one of the causes. The truth is that the fall in land values and unemployment are not related as cause and effect, but are both the direct consequences of one thing—the collapse of world prices. I am, etc, - ■

O. C. Mazengarb.

October 30.