18 HOW TO PAY FOR THE WAR

after nearly six months of war there still persistsa substantial volume of statistical unemployment.This is due to a failure of organisation, partlyunavoidable in so short a space of time, partlyavoidable if there was more energy and intelli-gence in the government. But anyone who arguesfrom this that we are still in the Age of Plentymakes a mistake. The nature of unemploymentto-day is totally different from what it was ayear ago. It is no longer caused by a deficiencyof demand. There is no longer a potential surplussupply of the things we want. The transition tofull employment is hindered by two obstacles.The first is due to the difficulty of shifting labourto the points where it is wanted. The second—and, for the time being, the chief—obstacle iscaused by the difficulties, other than the shortageof labour, in the way of existing demand becomingeffective. For example, there may be a demandfor cloth on the part both of exporters and ofhome consumers and there may be less than fullemployment in the woollen industry, and yet thisdemand will remain ineffective if the manufacturerscannot—for one reason or another, good or bad—obtain raw wool for the purpose of meeting thesedemands. Shortages of essential raw materials dueto shipping delays and other causes, and artificialshortages due to the inefficient workings of ournewly-born controls who cannot learn their un-accustomed job all at once, are in many cases amore limiting factor than the shortage of labour.And in other cases there is a shortage of plant.But I repeat that this does not mean we are