Evening star., 1934-09-30
Open the Door to Plenty

must add to the fact that these mil
lions of Americans now at the poverty
level are consuming an inadequate
quantity the fact that millions OF
Americans are consuming an in
adequate quality and variety of goods
and services. A completely realistic
analysis of our problem would indicate,
1 think, that our most serious problem
is not surplus, but famine. ! do not
mean quantitative famine. mean
qualitative famine.
People may starve because the
amount of their food is too little.
They may starve also because the
quality of their food is too low. The
first sort of famine is quantitative and
spectacular; the second sort is quail
tative and subtle. Quantitative famine
means death to the individual; quail
tative famine means depletion Of the
national fiber.
venture the prediction that if eco
nomic leadership should wrestle
seriously with the social significance
of diet, it would find that in genera
ton We could remake the physical
foundations of human America and.
in the remaking, absorb every food
surplus that now haunts us. And
what is true of foodStuffs is true of
most of the output of our enterprise.
business and industrial leader
ship that will take as its job the con-
quest of poverty and qualitative
famine, as l have here defined them,
will open up the biggest new market
We have yet known, solve such prob
lens of surplus as exist; realize, even
on a narrowed profit margin, larger
total profits than it has dared imagine,
and make the industrial giants of
yesterday seem dwarfs
The achievement of these ends re-
QuireS, as I have suggested, that We
turn our backs decisively upon any
idea of retreat to an age of scarcity,
and that we deliberately construct an
economics of plenty.
1 shall not presume to sketch the
intimate details of an economics OF
plenty. These must be hammered
out on the anvil of practical expert
ence But a few of the bases of an
economics of plenty have, I think,
become indisputably clear.
There must be no wholesale restric-
ton of production in an age of poten-
tial plenty. We must move ahead
under full steam. And, although it
may be damned as unrealistic and
oversimplified by this business man
and that economist, We must move
generally and promptly in the direc-
ton of higher wages, shorter hours,
lower prices and a narrower profit
margin per unit of scale or service.
All of which can, I am convinced,
mean not only greater social salts
faction to the masses, but greater
total profits to the producers.
Mass Production Urged.
We cannot run an economy OF
science. technology and power pro-
duction in low gear. Its nature is
such that it must run at full tilt
and play for mass production and
mass consumption. Otherwise it can
neither serve the masses to the limit
of its power nor make profits to the
limit of its possibility. 1t chokes it
self with unstable surpluses If it
produces to the limit when the masses
lack buying power to absorb its out
put. and it sinks itself under suicidal
overhead costs If it tries to operate
at less than its capacity. If our
economic policies prevent our system
of production from running at full
tilt, it is but business sense to change
our economic policies.
We cannot stabilize an economy Of
science, technology and power pro-
duction through any artificial eleva-
ton of prices that protects high pro-
duction costs, encourages waste. limits
output and tolerates monopoly. We
must give our productive energy its
head and adjust our economic policies
to its implications.
The need of the moment and the
need of the age. as have said, is
more goods at lower prices. I am
quite aware that the depression
showed some prices below the profit
making level, granted existing pro-
duction costs. Granted existing costs
Of production! That is the fatal
assumption upon which so much of
the superficial economic thinking of
the time rests. Is it either social
wisdom or sound business planning
to grant existing production costs?
There is relatively no limit to the
extent to which American ingenuity
can go in cutting production costs.
1t is short-sighted, to say the least.
to jack prices to point at which
managerial genius may go lazy on u.s.
Higher Income Declared Need.
Recovery would, I am convinced,
be further along today if We had
spent less energy in boosting prices,
had centered attention more effec-
lively on boosting incomes, with
ample credit, governmentally provided
if necessary, for wage-paying enter
prises during the transition to nor
NAL conditions, and had confronted
industry with the naked challenge to
cut production costs to point at
which profits would be possible at
low prices.
We cannot afford. in the long run.
to subsidize any production cost at
point higher than the lowest point
to which our best scientific and man.
agerial genius is able to reduce it..
If we stabilize a high-cost system of
production and stamp out the posi-
bility of a low-cost system we make
modern industry at once socially
sterile and financially futile.
Neurological advance is making a
shorter and shorter working day and
working week inevitable, unless we
are willing to let chronological un-
employment work such havoc as it
may in our economic order. A short
ening of the hours of labor is not a
matter of penalizing industry for the
benefit of its workers, it is essential
to the achievement of that wider dis
tribution of leisure which, alongside
of wider distribution of the national
income, is imperative if our economy
of science, technology and power pro-
duction is to have an adequate and
assured market for its vast output.
XVa oo Cifuafion AuaIyyed