Evening star., 1934-07-01

that is as long as population goes
on increasing unreStrictedly. But
q better approximation to prosperity for all
should certainly be reached by country with
as great a capacity to produce as the United
States There Is something not only illogical,
but repeant in the limitation or destruction
of agricultural products when thousands of
people have not enough to eat or wear, IN the
closing of factories when their output couio
easily be absorbed If only those who need is
could find means of obtaining it. The ques-
ton is one not of production, but of distribu-
ton we are told, but the economic tangle In
which the world finds itself is difficult to
straighten out Such careful scientific surveys
as this of DR.. Nourse and his associates at
least furnish some of the material on which
q future solution may be based. This volume
is the first in a series on the general subject.
"T'he Distribution of Wealth and Income in
Relation to Economic Progress" The succeed
ing volumes are to be entitled Americas Ca
pacity to Consume, The Formation of Capt.
6al" and Income and Economic Progress"
The three parts of Americas Capacity to
Produce" deal with raw materials, fabrication
and services. The chief divisions of raw ma
terials agricultural products, coal and coke,
petroleum. copper and other non-ferrous
metals, and cement and other earth materials.
Under fabrication the classification includes
food products, textiles and clothing. automo-
biles and tires, paper making, printing and
lures. Services are treated under electric
power utilities. transportation. merchandising.
money and credit and the national labor force.
Five valuable appendices give information
about methods of gathering information and
compiling statistics, detailed data several
subjects, and 81 statistical tables.
The conclusions reached after a study such
as this by economists of the scholarship and
experience of Dr. Nourse and his associates
(Frederick G. Tryon. Horace B. Drury, Maurice
Leven Harold O. Moulton and Cleona Lewis)
are extremely important. The caption of the
investigation, briefly stated for convenience.
should, DR.. Nourse says, be really limited as
follows: Americas Capacity to Produce Dur
ing the Period From 1900 TO 1880, With the
Capital Goods and Labor Force Which She
Then Possessed and With the Technology and
the General Pattern of Operative and CONNER
cial Organization Then Prevailing" Three
questions were raised in the research: Did
the margin of unutilized plant capacity in the
several branches of industry expand during
the period from 1900 to 1902" How much
plant capacity under practical conditions of
sustained operation utilized in the peak
year 1929 or in the prosperous period, 1926
1872" and How much unutiliZed labor was
there in 1929, and was the practically available
labor force adequate to man the unutilized
plant capacity and bring it to full produc-
tivity?" The answer to the first question is
mo except in the of transportation,
where facilities grew out of proportion with
utilization. due chiefly to increase in automo-
bes and the new system of public highways.
The answer to the second question is that
plant capacity was utilized from 10 to IS per
cent. The answer to the third question is
that every important branch Of industry had
a substantial labor slack in 1929" that there
was. in that boom year, considerable un-
employment.
The following statement will come as sur
y,ric to jp1v o,ir fin do NOT
bear out the contention of those who in the
midst Of the present depression, say that We
were living in fools paradise in 1929-that
We we're living beyond our MEANS and that
disaster had to follow. individuals, of course,
living beyond their private means, as
individuals always will in both prosperity and
depression. But the Nation not. We were
not trenching resources of capital goods
or of labor power" The reasons why, with this
margin of possible productivity, human needs
were not satisfied even in 1929, and are far less
nearly satisfied now, with the margin four
times as wide, are beyond the scope of this
book. The four volumes of the series may.
together form an economic testament capable
of pointing the way to reorganiZed economy
adequate to our needs.
STARS FELL ON ALABAMA. BY Carl GARNER.
Illustrated by Cyrus LIE Roy Baldridge. New
York; Farrar & Rinehart.
THERE is legend, supported by the men,
ories of the oldest slaves Of the fathers of
present inhabitants, that on some unknown
date shower of stars fell Alabama and
that ever since then the State has been be-
witched enchanted by some strange influence.
Carl GARNER, no scorner of such irrtationalities,
felt the spell during his six years Of residence
there and says: THE Congo is not more diff
ferent from Massachusetts, or Kansas or Cali
fornia. So have chasen to write of Alabama
/. not as State which is part of nation, but
as q strange country in which I once lived
and from which have now returned" Oppo-