SEVEN FAT YEARS

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3449, 24 November 1932, Page 6

SEVEN FAT YEARS

BUT NOT ALL FAT. In "The Listener" Mr. S. K. Ratcliffe reminds his readers (or informs them, if they never knew) that the prosperity of America's seven fat years was not evenly spread. It could be called a steel-automatic-electrical building prosperity. But it could not be called a rural prosperity, not yet a textile prosperity. Even during the seven years—"seven amazing years" following the shallow slump of 1921 the wool and cotton industries were in constant distress, with miserable wages. "The farming population was becoming poor." Coalmining was in chaos and the collieries were often battlefields. . A section of industry rose to heights far beyond the resources of the whole of industry, and the top of the pile of prosperity was big enough to hide the narrowness of its foundations —until Wall Street values broke in October, 1929. As an Englishman he compares the American and the British experiences: "The American experience is different from ours mainly in this. We have been enduring hard times for more than ten years. They were plunged from a height of prosperity into the pit of depression within a few months or weeks. Britain is a small and manageable country, with a unified National Government. The United States is a vast continental territory, with 48 State Governments, and a population of 120 millions made up of people from all the countries of Europe. We have to remind ourselves that the American national task is of enormous difficulty, far greater than any other, except that of Russia." One-third Out of Work.

The Northern Hemisphere is now into winter, and the President of the American Federation of Labour, Mr. William Green, estimated that this winter the United States will have 13 million people out of work. "It is calculated that there should be in the U.S.A. a total of forty millions o±' people, as the census reports say, gainfully employed. Mr. Green's figure —and it is not the highest we have had—means that nearly cne-third of the employable population is out of work, making with their dependants a terrifying total of more than 30 millions in need of relief. "But what about unemployment benefit? America, as you know, has no system of national insurance; how does it deal with the enormous task of giving relief to ten or twelve millions out of work? So far this has been done by means of private charity, special funds, relief committees formed by the Mayors, and funds provided by the local and State Governments. The American people

have been very generous in thesa ways. And here is a point which is of special interest to all British people visiting the United States* American people are often not well informed about the methods for relief adopted in their own country. They think of England as a country of the dole, and until their own unemployment became so serious they looked upon the system of public relief with disapproval or fear. Most of them, I am sure, do not know about our nationai insurance, with the workers' regular contribution; nor, rather strangely, do they know how large a part of the relief in America comes out of public funds—that is, out of taxes. In other words, they have not realised that they have had a dole system without any form of workers' insurance. The present outlook is very serious, because in mist of the cities the relief funds are used up and the authorities cannot hope to raise very much by more special appeals. There is no doubt that taxation for relief will have to be increased. "Until this year the Federal Government in Washington has not made grants for relief from the national exchequer. President Hoover was dead against it. He held to the view that each city and State must take care of its own unemployed. But this is now changed. Congress voted a large sum (about £4OO million sterling) for purposes of relief, and much of this is now being applied. But all thoughtful Americans admit that in a winter of widespread distress it does not go very far." The greater the prosperity, the greater the inflation. The Americans after the war "gloried in their plenty. . . • Privately, and in all public enterprises, they threw money away with both hands." In New Zealand millions lie idle in railway material. In America the idle or ! frozen millions are in all sorts of material. Huge plants must work or ruin their owners. But how can they sell the products oversea if the United States will not buy from oversea? And how can they sell at home when one-third of the employable population is idle? "Mass production came upon America too -suddenly." The mass production thought broke in upon protective tariff thought. The two proved incompatible. "Mass production in the American scale demands an expanding market outside the country's own borders for its surplus products." America, in short, increased the industrial steam pressure and shut off the safety valve. It was throught that a safety valve might be found in ever-increasing wages, producing constantly rising internal purchasing power. Workers were to be paid more so that they could buy the products of their own mass production—products which the poor foreigner could not pay for. Did this plan succeed? Mr. Green's figures seem to say No.