The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

CONSUMPTION AND CO-OPERATION 65

a nation is only as rich as its population taken asa whole. The pace of the squadron is regulated by its slowest horse.

(5) Again; this restriction of credit has compelled the possessing classes to demand an even higher return on their investments. The war forced up prices; there was no compensating credit—rather the reverse, accentuated by the premature policy of deflation; and as the unearned incomes demanded the pre-war equivalent, they now insist upon ten-per-cent., where formerly they were content with five-per-cent. This, in its turn, has depressed wages, with the tragic results now so painfully obvious.

We would indeed be cowards and weaklings if we accepted the threatened or actual collapse of Capitalism as so calamitous as to preclude an economic revival on the basis of fellowship and not of competition at home and abroad. For we know that we have at our disposal the greatest accumulation of wealth in men, matenals and credit that the world has yet known. What the thoughtful man must surely most fear is that organised labour, in its suffering and despair, may accept Rationalisation as the readiest means to escape from an intolerablesituation. Rationalisation is, in fact, Capitalism’s confession of failure. If it had not grown irrational, why should it ask to be rationalised? That Capitalism remains irrational, and even stupid, is evidenced by the damning fact that it has forced more and yet more restrictions upon credit, by reducing wages