3 66 THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT bk. vi

offer courses of Political Economy . This was due, I learned,to the intervention of an Economic Professor who had readmy book and considered it as equivalent in rationality to anattempt to prove the flatness of the earth. How could therebe any limit to the amount of useful saving when every itemof saving went to increase the capital structure and the fundfor paying wages? Sound economists could not fail to viewwith horror an argument which sought to check the sourceof all industrial progress . 1 Another interesting personalexperience helped to bring home to me the sense of myiniquity. Though prevented from lecturing on economics inLondon, I had been allowed by the greater liberality of theOxford University Extension Movement to address audiencesin the Provinces, confining myself to practical issues relatingto working-class life. Now it happened at this time thatthe Charity Organisation Society was planning a lecturecampaign upon economic subjects and invited me to preparea course. I had expressed my willingness to undertake thisnew lecture work, when suddenly, without explanation, theinvitation was withdrawn. Even then I hardly realised thatin appearing to question the virtue of unlimited thrift I hadcommitted the unpardonable sin.

In this early work Mr. Hobson with his collaboratorexpressed himself with more direct reference to theclassical economics (in which he had been brought up)than in his later writings; and for this reason, as wellas because it is the first expression of his theory, I willquote from it to show how significant and well-foundedwere the authors’ criticisms and intuitions. Theypoint out in their preface as follows the nature of theconclusions which they attack:

Saving enriches and spending impoverishes the communityalong with the individual, and it may be generally defined asan assertion that the effective love of money is the root ofall economic good. Not merely does it enrich the thrifty

1 Hobson had written disrespectfully in The Physiology of Industry,p. 26: “Thrift is the source of national wealth, and the more thrifty anation is the more wealthy it becomes. Such is the common teaching ofalmost all economists; many of them assume a tone of ethical dignity asthey plead the infinite value of thrift; this note alone in all their drearysong has caught the favour of the public ear.”