The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

FOREWORD XXVil

the confusion and bewilderment of plain men. Without warning and against commonsense, we may find ourselves embarked upon a policy of trying to re-establish national prosperity by cutting down our capacity to produce and making cheap things dear. This is not fantastic: already we are confronted with proposals to limit production of wheat because huge surpluses have accumulated; to reduce the productive capacity of the cotton textile industry because our markets have contracted ; to regulate the coal trade by restricting production and fixing prices; and to impose tarifis on imports in order to secure a fall in the wage level by raising the cost of commodities to the consumer. These may be intelligent proposals; at any rate they are plausibly advocated and are backed by specious arguments, which have begun to influence the minds of trade unionists and Socialists.

Who is to adjudicate? At the present time, the onus lies on about a score of hard-worked Ministers who are almost at their wits’ end to find enough time in each twenty-four hours to administer their departments, read their “‘ briefs,”’ make speeches, and get their Bills through Parliament in something reasonably like the shape in which they were projected. It is asking these men to do an impossible thing if we expect them to combine the conduct of political affairs with the making of a new economic heaven and earth by the magic process of bringing in more Bills, which will provide opportunities for endless