ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

364

back by temporary obstacles, but even so it issafe to say that technical efficiency is increasingby more than 1 per cent per annum compound.There is evidence that the revolutionary techni-cal changes, which have so far chiefly affectedindustry, may soon be attacking agriculture.We may be on the eve of improvements in theefficiency of food production as great as thosewhich have already taken place in mining,manufacture, and transport. In quite a fewyears—in our own lifetimes I mean—we maybe able to perform all the operations of agri-culture, mining, and manufacture with a quarterof the human effort to which we have beenaccustomed.

For the moment the very rapidity of thesechanges is hurting us and bringing difficultproblems to solve. Those countries are suffer-ing relatively which are not in the vanguard ofprogress. We are being afflicted with a newdisease of which some readers may not yet haveheard the name, but of which they will hear agreat deal in the years to come—namely, techno-logical unemployment. This means unemploy-ment due to our discovery of means of economis-ing the use of labour outrunning the pace atwhich we can find new uses for labour.

But this is only a temporary phase of mal-adjustment. All this means in the long run thatmankind is solving its economic problem. I wouldpredict that the standard of life in progressivecountries one hundred years hence will bebetween four and eight times as high as it is