Page:The Economics of Unemployment.djvu/137

this means either an augmentation of purchasing power which shall give more immediate effective demand for goods to persons who will spend it in buying them. But the aggregate market can only be thus expanded in so far as the credits operate to raise consumption among the low-consuming populations and classes. No one would suggest applying credits to stimulate shipbuilding or the building of woollen mills at the present time. The folly of adding to the unemployed plants in such industries would be too obvious. On the other hand, credits applied to promote the production of ploughs and steam-engines to be exchanged in Roumania, or in more fertile provinces of Russia, for foodstuffs to raise the consumption of starving or underfed peoples in the Volga or other depleted areas, would react in a genuine increase of production, both here in the trades doing this export trade and in the countries which received these ploughs and engines. As regards the emergency provisions for unemployment in this country, it is pretty clear that in a general trade depression it is folly to set men working in their trades. Either they must be set on public works that could not otherwise be undertaken then, or in default of these, they must be provided with food, clothes, etc., or the means to buy them. Either course means a stimulation of effective demand for commodities, and, so far as it goes, reacts in stimulation of production of these articles along the various direct and indirect channels of production in this and other countries. The only cure for under-production is more production; but this cure can only operate on condition that the distribution of the ownership of the increased