Readings in Current Economic Problems

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914. Excerpt: ... months. Who shall say? For who shall deduce from the parts of the organism their joint needs now and for the next few months? Fortunately, nature solves the riddle by giving to such organisms appetite. In the social organism the analogous regulator is to be found in individual demands. There are two further dangers. The one is that, though some State action may give scope to individual initiative--by which we advance--another kind of State action may weaken it. The other danger arises from the fact that distribution is so linked to production that complexity in the one necessitates complexity in the other. If society is incapable of assuming a more intricate system of distribution, further complication for the improved economic working of the productive system is retarded. Industrialism is relatively simple in form and limited in extent in the Australasian Colonies. Agriculture is the chief occupation, and this being untouched by the arbitration laws is a vent for any labour or capital driven out of the industries. Hence the settlement of wages by boards with power may not very seriously diminish prosperity. But it would in a country with more involved productive arrangements, where the loophole of escape from onerous decisions was less adequate. Progress would be impeded until the artificial system was repudiated, and the old lesson that had been forgotten of the self-settlement of wages under simple conditions had been learnt afresh. Besides, lastly, there is the unwholesomely close association between politics and self-interest. What would be the state of democracy in the next generation if wage-earners regarded the government as one of the chief arbiters of wages, as they might easily do when, according to their experiences, wages had been settled, as...