The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

26 THE HOUSE OF INDUSTRY

to be spent to find employment can cure the disease; indeed the more money spent on present lines the further we are from control and co-ordination, with the result that the disease grows worse and there is no apparent decline in “unemployment.

There is serious depression in the cotton industry. The Chancellor of the Exchequer recently suggested that the cotton mills would be busy again if only the Chinese millions would add an inch or two to their shirts. Why go so far afield?

I asked a middle-aged friend of mine what his linen cupboard lacked. He is in constant employment and earns, I should imagine, about £3 a week. He thought for a minute, then said: ‘““ Three bolster-slips, six pillow-slips, six sheets, three tablecloths.’’ A natural, but not an effective demand; but let us suppose that there are five million British housewives in the same situation. A potential butstillnotaneffectivedemand. Ifwe could make it effective, then truly the Lancashire wheels would whirr.

No instalment plan would meet the case, because it is a problem not of dispersed but concentrated credit. It is a problem of paying for these textile goods out of increased earnings and not out of current wages. If it were merely payment out of existing wages, we are economically no further advanced. The textile industry would, of course, gain at other industries’ expense.

Now suppose that the various delegations in the House of Industry were to confer and decide