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ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

factors—the ever-increasing technical efficiencyof our industry (I believe that output per head is10 per cent greater than it was even so recentlyas 1924), the greater economic output of women,and the larger proportion of the populationwhich is at the working period of life. Thefall in the price of our imports compared withthat of our exports also helps. The result isthat with three-fourths of our industrial capacitywe can now produce as much wealth as we couldproduce with the whole of it a few years ago.But how rich we could be if only we could findsome way of employing yWr-fourths of ourcapacity to-day!

Our trouble is, then, not that we lack thephysical means to support a high standard oflife, but that we are suffering a breakdown inorganisation and in the machinery by which webuy and sell to one another.

There are two reactions to this breakdown.We experience the one or the other accordingto our temperaments. The one is inspired bya determination to maintain our standards oflife by bringing into use our wasted capacity—that is to say, to expand, casting fear and evenprudence away. The other, the instinct tocontract, is based on the psychology of fear.How reasonable is it to be afraid?

We live in a society organised in such a waythat the activity of production depends on theindividual business man hoping for a reasonableprofit, or at least, to avoid an actual loss. Themargin which he requires as his necessary