The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1944-05-24
TODAY and TOMORROW
DISCOVERED IN OUR TIME
By WALTER LIPPMANN

DISCOVERED IN OUR TIME
A conference of men and women
who represent employers organi-
cations, labor unions and govern
ments in many countries has been
meeting recently in Philadelphia
They adopted a charter of which
the central idea is an agreement
ito further among the nations of
the world programs which will
achieve full employment and the
rising of standards of living"
At first glance this may seem
like one of those ideas which are
so big that they are merely pioue
and Wishful h p S from which
nothing can or will come. Yet, in
fact it is a safe and conservative
prediction that when the war is
over, no matter who is President,
no matter which party is in office,
the paramount question will be
how to achieve and maintain full
employment and a rising standard
of life. No public man will deny
that this is the overall aim Of his
policy; parties will stand or fall
as they succeed in carrying it out.
This is a new thing in our own
domestic politics, and indeed 1T is a
new thing in the history of the
world. Men have always, of
course, deplored unemployment
and wanted good and profits BILE
work, and they have struggled and
fought for it. But in this century,
bloody and violent through it mas
been, mankind has made an epoch
making discovery. It is that in
voluntary mass unemployment in
modern industrial nation is an
Unnecessary and p-eventable evil.
Economists, industrial leaders
public officials are by no means
entirely agreed which among the
many measures are the best. But
never again will they or the mass
OF the people accept the view,
which was the common view thirty
years ago, that public policy has
nothing to do with and can do
nothing effective about the main
tenance Of reasonably full employ
ment. In the two great wars of
our generation and in the depres-
sion between the two wars it has
been demonstrated, one may Npe
even to the satisfa ction of the most
unreconstructed minds, that mass
unemployment is not inevitable
and that it is, therefore, intoler-
able.
The discovery of new principles
OF pubic policy is so rare that we
find it difficult to recognize them
when they are discovered. We are
used to new discoveries in medi-
cine and engineering and We are,
If anything, -credulous about.
let us say, the sulfa drugs and
penicillin, about flying or the
newer alloys and the plastics. In
government and public policy
there are few great new discov-
cries and there are no panaceas;
most of the problems of interna
tlonal politics were anxioucly ex-
arained by Thucydides, and there
are few fundamental problems OF
government that were not studied
by Aristotle.
Yet when we look back we can
see that the world we were born
into was profoundly affected by the
discovery in the eighteenth CEN
fury of the principle of the interna.
tlonal division of labor. From the
very earliest times there had been
international trading. Nevertheless
the wide application Of this princi-
pie as means of increasing the
wealth of nations rested on a new
discovery which men like David
Hume and Adam Smith were able
to define and to explain.
In our epoch the principle of the
division of labor has been modi-
fled and supplemented by the dis
covery that large nations with big
resources, skilled labor and pro-
gressive management can, if thew
insist on it, regulate the cycle OF
booms and depressions. Since the
discovery has been made the pub
lie will no more tolerate failure
to apply it than they would toll
crate hospitals which refused to
use sulfa drugs and pencillin.
Inc international Labor Organ
lzatlon has no power whatsoever.
1t cannot legiclate. It cannot ap-
propr1ate money. It cannot bind
any government to do any partic-
ular thing. Yet it has spoken with
great authority, with the same
kind OF great authority which a
convention of doctors would have
it they declared that the means
for dealing with an epidemic ex-
listed.
If the means exist, or with fur
Their experimentation they can be
found, no public health officer
could long ignore the findings of
the doctors.
We have here an exhibit of in
ternatlOna1 co-oneratio,, which ;r