NEED OF FORETHOUGHT

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 59, 7 September 1937, Page 11

NEED OF FORETHOUGHT

ECONOMICS ADDRESS

SEARCHING QUESTIONS

Sir William Beveridge, the.Director of the London School of Economics, put some searching questions to the Government in an address on "The Place of Forethought in Public Affairs," says the "Manchester Guardian." He was speaking to the Institute, of Municipal Treasurers and Accountants.

There is no machinery, said "Sir William, for securing comprehensive survey in advance of the problems of Government Politicians in office are too busy; politicians out of office are more concerned with turning the Government out than with what they will do when they are in. Civil servants are too busy and too limited in scope.

The only eventuality for which preparation is made systematically in advance is-war—through'.the Committee of Imperial Defence. . Preparation against war is obviously necessary. But there are other eventualities, definitely more probable,than war, for. which no similar preparation is made. Two are named here as illustrations of the need of forethought in public affairs. , ' . The first is the slump which we may expect after the present boom. '. The reasons for expecting a slump after, the boom are partly general and partly special. Tfie general reason is the experience of nearly 100 years of cyclical fluctuation of trade, industry, and employment. The special reason Ms the stimulant given to industrial activity by the re-armament programme. When this programme gets past its most intense phase unemployment; through displacement of particular classes of men, is likely to be added to cyclical depression. BUILDING A RESERVE. On the side of unemployment insurance, provision is being made for this, by building a reserve—now over £45,000,000—in the Unemployment Fund. But this,' besides being accidental, is far from adequate. Insurance ■ covers only part of unemployment, and does nothing to prevent unemployment in the slump. Damping down cyclical fluctuation directly involves more knowledge of its causes than we possess; but is the Government doing anything to promote discovery of these causes? Is it doing anything to. plan the distribution in time of public work, central, and local, so as to counteract the trade cycle? Has it a programme of peace works, or plans to follow the re-armament programme? 'The second subject calling for forethought is the coming decline of our population. Some decline now is certain; if present tendencies continue, the ultimate decline will be drastic. If birth-rates and death-rates continue as they are the population of England and Wales 100 years from now will be 20,000,000, as it was in 1861. There are some reasons for expecting a further fall of the birth-rate (making the future population still smaller); there is no particular reason to expect a rise of births. At some time or other, if we do not want the population of Britain to disappear completely, the proportion of families with three children and more must be increased. The steps required for this depend upon further knowledge of why so few parents have three or more children now. INFLUENCE OF HOUSING. But it is difficult to avoid the suggestion that the size of families, under general birth control, must be affected by the kind of homes in which children have to be born and reared, including not only the number and size of rooms but the labour of housework. The houses that we are building today will last perhaps for two or three generations. In' building them, are we thinking at all of their bearing on population? The 'houses we build today may be a shell too small for our survival. The condition of securing forethought in public affairs is to have adequate machinery, an organ of, forethought, in central and local government alike. For the central Government, this means an economic general staff —a group of civil servants with no daily administrative tasks, but with the duty of surveying comprehensively all economic problems that may face the Government, with funds for its own inquiries and for setting on foot inquiries by experts in the universities and elsewhere, with influence to co-ordinate the researches of the separate Government Departments. For local government it means one of the functions of a bureau of municipal research and information. A bureau of this kind—that is, an institution for comparative study of local government and pooling of experience—is required for many reasons, and has often been proposed. To find an organ of forethought in the public affairs of local government is one additional reason. Its cost would be negligible in relation to1 the gains that might result.