South Yorkshire Times, June 3rd, 1944
Planning for Work
Though there is a negative quality about the Government’s White Paper on post-war employment, in that it seeks to prevent mass unemployment rather than to take steps to ensure full employment for all, the proposals very definitely constitute a step in the right direction. We have indeed travelled some distance since the quiescence of the last slump rather more than a decade ago. There is still a long way to go but at least we are decisively launched on the journey.
The important point is that the Government have accepted as one of their primary responsibilities the maintenance of a high level of employment after the war. This is a major statement of policy. Previously our Governments, if not exactly Olympian in their aloofness, have usually maintained a certain detachment from economics, sticking rigidly through good times and bad to a set of principles which may have shone with a classic correctness but were frequently most uncomfortable to live up to.
The politicians have come down to earth. Something had to be done about the dreadful reproach of mass unemployment, and we can now have confidence that something will be done. The plan is reasonable, and not, so far as it has been expanded, complicated. It is based cheaply on the premise that the amount of employment depends on the amount of expenditure. If total expenditure is kept up unemployment will correspondingly be maintained. The idea is not so much to build up an economy which will abolish booms and slumps as to establish an organisation which will scent these unwelcome and phenomena from afar and counteract them by external means before they can develop. It is a plan which avoids radical disturbances of the present system, a consideration which should make it widely acceptable.
Chief features of the White Paper are the suggestions that when unemployment is low the weakest social insurance contributions payable by employers and employed should be increased, to be reduced when unemployment rises, that there should be planned spending on public works to check the onset of a slump; that concerted action between the Treasury and the banks should influence the volume of capital expenditure by variations in the rate of interest; and that variations of taxation should be considered as a means of keeping employment at a higher level and the budget not necessarily balanced annually. Here in South Yorkshire we are particularly interested in the Government’s avowed intention to influence the location of new enterprises, and to help the coal, steel and other heavy industries to reach the highest possible pitch of efficiency and to secure overseas markets. Lack of variety in industry has long been a disability of the coalfield and if anything can be done to remove it, the advantages will be obvious and considerable.
Private enterprise is to have the opportunity to carry out this mixing of light and new industries with the heavy industries and their proper distribution, but if private enterprise cannot manage it the State means to do so. This has a high priority in the list of Government plans. It is well that all should understand how much success of the scheme depends on the stable level of prices and wages. Both prices and wages must bear a close relation to output, increases for employees being related to output per head and better returns for employers coming from larger output rather than dearer goods. The concept of the plan provides yet another instance suggesting that self-restraint and ability to take a long view are the qualities we must cultivate when we beat our swords into ploughshares.