The Ypsilanti daily press. (Ypsilanti, Mich.) 1928-1962, 1942-02-04

cial adviser.
The nub Of IL is that DR.. Hansen
doesn't consider postwar economic
depressions inevitable, and maybe
he can prove it, as to the future,
but he doesn't stop there; he goes
on to say that experience doesn't
support the theory of such depres-
sions inevitability.
1 never heard il contradicted
that that's exactly what all past
experience HAS indicated.
DR.. Hansen recognizes that war
Is developing our productive capa-
city far in excess Of civilians de-
mands on it hitherto. Some OBJ
servers take the view that. the
conflict presently being ended, de-
mands on our plants. on our labor
and on our farmers will slump
back to their peacetime normal,
which won't absorb their previous
~ overgrown outputs, and that
thatll involve a crash and then q
prolonged depression.
Not Inevitable
BY no means necessarily, re-
joins the professor; by leading
much more abundant civilian lives,
Wen sop up all our surplusage of
energy, directly.
Up to that point he makes out
a pretty good case.
Darned few folk have more Of
the necessities and luXuries of life
than they want. If they can get
more Of them, unqueStionably they
will be perfectly acquiescent.
But will they be able to pay for
them?
If not. the stuff viii be available
but there won't be & market for ii.
Peacetime buying. by would-be
civilian customers, is different from
wartime buying by the govern
ment. The government does it
largely on credit, up to so or 100
billions, and the debt runs along
for as long as the government finds
1t convenient TO continue it. An or
binary purchaser needs cash, or. II
he trades on tick, has to foot his
bill some time short of three or
four generations on into infinity
Civilian demand won't blow up
Immediately following peace's res
toration II didn't the last time.
No, consumerdom will be half
starved to death for domestic sup
plies and such stuff. TIN still have
a lot Of its wartime wages left on
hand, and will buy like fury. Or.
Hansen comedies as much and
says it ought TO be restrained, or
it'n result In a boom. He recog-
nizes that slumps follow booms,
that hard times follow slumps, and
he's afraid Of them. He says a
booms our "gravest danger"
What's to prevent a boom,
though?
Taxes as Brake
Well, high taxation ought to do.
It. Wen have that, all right. Quite
likely it'll put ceiling on civilian
over-buying. But, if so, why won't
it also prevent ivilian absorption
Of war-expanded production? Its
direction into civilian channels?
1t takes quite while for war
to make its after-effects felt.
We all remember that 1t took a
dozen years for 1914-1s to get in
its deadly work. The Spanish
American scrap wasn't much of a
conflict, but it did have something
Of an aftermath quite a bit later.
The War Of the Secession was too
far back for my recollection. but /
do recall a corking. mean depres-
sion in 1898, and President Melvin
A. Traylor Of the First National
bank Of Chicago, long dead now,
told me that he considered it the
last thunderclap Of that convul-
sion. nearly 30 years delayed.
I'd think that this one is Of suf-
fcient proportions to hang fire for
a century.
Where Professor Hansen gets his
dope to the purport that expert
ence doesn't prove wars to have
preceded awful economic periods
is a good deal Of a mystery. He's
a great economist, ! know, but I'll
be interested 10 check I'D on him,