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ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

ment plan can help the Balance of Trade .Whenever any one is thrown out of work orotherwise impoverished, he will perforce con-sume less. Most of this reduced consumptionwill merely cause business losses and unemploy-ment to other Englishmen. Some part of it,however, perhaps a fifth, will be at the expenseof imports; though even this would not helpif those Free Traders are right who think thata reduction of imports leads to a correspond-ing reduction of exports. But it is a wastefulway of setting about the task of reducing im-ports. The other way is by increasing both thequantity of unemployment and also the pains ofbeing unemployed, since this may slightly in-crease the chance of wage-reductions being ac-cepted. Economy can have no other purposeor meaning except to release resources. Asmall proportion of what is thus released willrelieve the Balance of Trade . The rest will beresources of domestic plant and labour, of whichwe already have a surplus out of use.

Thus the Government’s scheme, for the sakeof which we are asked to swallow so much, is inthe main misdirected, and will not assist thesolution of our twin problems of unemploymentand an adverse balance of trade.

As regards the latter, which, unremedied,will at no distant date break the gold standardeven if we cut school-teachers’ salaries to nothing,the only remedies now open to us are Devalua-tion, a drastic restriction of imports by directmethods, a severe cut, not less than 30 per cent