120

ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

expenditure is not large in proportion to thewaste and loss accruing year by year throughunemployment, as can be seen by comparingit with the figures quoted above. It only re-presents 5 per cent of the loss already accumu-lated on account of unemployment since 1921.It is equal to about 2-| per cent of the nationalincome. If the experiment were to be con-tinued at the rate of £100,000,000 per annumfor three years, and if the whole of it were to beentirely wasted, the annual interest payable onit hereafter would increase the Budget by lessthan 2 per cent. In short, it is a very modestprogramme. The idea that it represents adesperate risk to cure a moderate evil is thereverse of the truth. It is a negligible risk tocure a monstrous anomaly.

Nothing has been included in the programmewhich cannot be justified as worth doing for itsown sake. Yet even if half of it were to bewasted, we should still be better off. Wasthere ever a stronger case for a little boldness,for taking a risk if there be one?

It may seem very wise to sit back and wag thehead. But while we wait, the unused labour ofthe workless is not piling up to our credit in abank, ready to be used at some later date. It isrunning irrevocably to waste; it is irretrievablylost. Every puff of Mr. Baldwin’s pipe costsus thousands of pounds.

The objection, which is raised more fre-quently, perhaps, than any other, is that moneyraised by the State for financing productive