ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

150

for a penny, he said, “Sir, I don’t gather fromthis that eggs are plenty in your miserableIsland , but that pence are few.”

Cheapness which is due to increased efficiencyand skill in the arts of production is indeed abenefit. But cheapness which means the ruinof the producer is one of the greatest economicdisasters which can possibly occur.

It would not be true to say that we are nottaking a grave view of the case. Yet I doubtwhether we are taking a grave enough view.In the enforced idleness of millions, enoughpotential wealth is running to waste to workwonders. Many million pounds’ worth of goodscould be produced each day by the workers andthe plants which stand idle—and the workerswould be the happier and the better for it. Weought to sit down to mend matters, in the moodof grave determination and the spirit of actionat all costs, which we should have in a war. Yeta vast inertia seems to weigh us down. Thepeculiarity of the position to-day—to my mind—is that there is something to be said for nearlyall the remedies that any one has proposed,though some, of course, are better than others.All the rival policies have something to offer.Yet we adopt none of them.

The worst of it is that we have one excellentexcuse for doing nothing. To a large extentthe cure lies outside our own power. The prob-lem is an international one, and for a countrywhich depends on foreign trade as much as wedo there are narrow limits to what we can achieve