The producers news. [volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1918-1937, 1927-07-29
u. S. Machinery

IL
impossible to make wages high
enough to enable consumers to buy
what is produced This dilemma of
capitalist society is skillfully dis
sected in Business Without A Buyer,
a book by w. t. Foster and Waddill
Catchings HI authors do not offer
any solution although promising to
tackle the problem in later look.
But they suggest that most industries
today would gam by a more ccu-
rageous use of the high wage, low
price, mass Dro uction program.
A deficit III consumer-buylrg
power, a"a:C:.s % the authors, is
at the basis of the country's inability
to get the Iall benefit of what c'vil-
cation ffers T. material wealth. Ia
dustry does I OF pay the increased
output.
As a result, hey point out, lear
has rec1~e the dominant motive
today cCrs 14ers in constant fear
that they cannot get enough, az
producers IN constant fear that 5hey
will produce too much. Employers in
fear that the markets cannot absorb
the output curtail production; work
ers threatened with recurrent unem-
ployment resort to slowing up on the
job. Nations in fear taat world
markets are not large enough resort
TO war
roster and Catchings interpret
many features of the economic order
in terms of this problem: the oper-
alton of the federal reserve, install
ment selling, the protective tariff etc.
/ War comes when the productive
power of a nation is 50 much greater
than tie purchasing power Of IFS
people that it tries to take outside
markets by force.
The prt ductive capacity of the
world, they say, exceeds tn, money
demand Of the world. The nations,
therefore, are struggling for foreign
markets which do not exist. Mean
time, and partly for that very reason,
theJ are neglieting opportunities to
create new markets at home"
The great purpose which shoEld
dominate government, whether demo-
cratic or alistocratic, they suggest,
is to enable the people to enjoy more
Of the good things of life. But pro
perity has come to the present. gener-
aticn in this country largely by
chance: lit did not come because
either organized business o. govern
ment foresaw the necessity OF a rapid
grawth of capital expendit ares and
deliberately planned to bring it about
at the right rate" The chic. factor
IN that chance, according to the
authors, has been the rate of growth
Of the alto industry. That rate can
not long continue.
The present prosperity cannot be
sustained unless some other industry
or combination of industries--a;det
by an expansion of instalment selling
or, far better, by a sufficient ex-
pa.slon Oh consumer income - de-
velops as rapidly in the near future
as the automobile industry has de-
veloped in the recent past" they as
sert.
There is only one permanent So
luton, they emphasize, "and that is
to enable the people of the United
States to consume as much as they
produce of consumer goods, or the
full equivalent in the products of
other countries. All other means are
only temporary expedients."
dIhis book, by the head of the Pollak
Foundation for Economic Research
and practical investment banker. is
important to the labor movement. 1t
provides theoretical justification for
the American Federation of Labor
contention that wages should not be
geared to the cost of living but to the
rising curve of productivity. But it
goes further to demonstrates the i'm
protance of unified social control over
the machinery of production and dis
tribution.-L. 0.
Business Without A Buyer, by Will
liam Trufant Foster and WaddiIl
Catchings; HOughtOn Mifflin Co., BOs-
ton, Mass, So.