The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1933-12-21

attempted to SHOW the other day.
measures under NRA and AAA Il
collective control.
Without this feeling we should
in anything like their present mag
nitude or intensity. Their vital
principle, that is to say, the prin-
ciple which causes the majority of
farmers and business men 10 adopt
them, is that they may makee posi-
bic an increase of production
Now, the sense of being choked by
overproduction invariably accompa-
MES a depression. 1t is natural
enough that it should. There is
more wheat, cotton, metal than can
be sold, there are factories working
at small fraction of capacity.
there are railroads, ships, apartment
houses, hotels, partially empty and
idle, there are great numbers Of
unemployed men, great funds Of idle
capital.
1t looks as if there were too much
of everything. In every great de-
preston the public generally, and
even some economists of high stand
ing, contemplate these things and
conclude that the obvious results of
the depression, namely, an unsala-
bic excess Of everything, are really
the causes of depression This is
so persistent an optical illusion that
in the depths of a depression it is
almost impossible to shake it off.
Now, it is very important to shake
it off if we are to deal intelligently
with recovery and with the more
permanent reconstruction. The best
way I know Of to get rid Of this
illusion is to read economic history
EOR example. In 1886, DR.. Car
n rol D. Wright, the commissioner
Of labor, wrote report. There had
then been a world depression last
ing about thirteen years, interrupt
ed by a small and temporary re-
covery around 1880. This is what
Wright said forty-seven years ago:
The family of manufacturing
states, Great Britain, France, Bel
GUM and the United States, if not
Austria, Russia and Italy, are suf-
fering from an industrial depression
novel in its kind, and yet having
characteristic features of similarity
throughout the whole range of
states overprOduction seems to
prevail in all alike . In England,
Belgium and France the railroads
and canals that are really needed
have been built In Holland the
great works are completed This
full supply of economic tools to meet
the wants of nearly all branches Of
commerce and industry is the most
important factor in the present in
dustrial depression.
1t is true that the discovery of
new processes of manufacture will
undoubtedly continue, and this will
act as an ameliorating influence,
but it will not leave room for a
marked extension, such as has been
witnessed during the last fifty years,
or afford a remunerative employ
fnent of the vast amount of capital
which has been created during that
period"
Yet when Carol D. Wright wrote
these words the physical volume of
production in the United States was
not third of what it was in 1926.
and per capita it was about Sc per
cent. Forty years after Wright
thought that we were over produc-
ing we were producing and selling
nearly twice the amount of goods
per person.
OBVIOUSLY Wright was the vic
~ tim Of an optical illusion. But
he was not the first nor the last
among able and enlightened men
who have been the victims of it dur
ing depression.
Any one now living must be
astonished to learn that in 1919
there were economists who thought
the world then was producing more
than it could consume, and yet we
find Sismondi, the well-known Swiss
economist, writing more than CEN
fury and that "overproduction is a
fatal effect of contemporaneous
economic organization"
We are justified, therefore, in de-
scribing the doctrine of overproduc-
ton as a kind OF melancholy, which
accompanies a prolonged economic
breakdown 1t is not at all unlike
the state of mind Of the bedridden
patient during long and slow con-
valescence.
He does not think he is ever going
to get up again and walk, and
secretly he hardly wishes to- He is
half afraid to leave the controlled
environment of the sickroom, the
managed existence of the invalid,
and often you have to push him out
of bed to make him well.
Perhaps the time has come to
push ourselves out of bed and throw
off our own well-developed case of
hypochondria.
At any rate, until We have done
this, we shall not see clearly how
many of these cushions, crutches,
tohics, diets we need permanently.
Nor shall we see clearly just what
reforms of our habits we mean to
make in order not to lay ourselves
up again in quite such desperate
illness.
Copyright. 1881